R.F.NARIMAN,J. - (1.) This contempt petition raises grave issues regarding the criminalisation of politics in India and brings to our attention a disregard of the directions of a Constitution Bench of this Court in Public Interest Foundation and Ors. v. Union of India and Anr. (2019) 3 SCC 224.
(2.) In this judgment, this Court was cognisant of the increasing criminalisation of politics in India and the lack of information about such criminalisation amongst the citizenry. In order to remedy this information gap, this Court issued the following directions: "116. Keeping the aforesaid in view, we think it appropriate to issue the following directions which are in accord with the decisions of this Court: 116.1. Each contesting candidate shall fill up the form as provided by the Election Commission and the form must contain all the particulars as required therein. 116.2. It shall state, in bold letters, with regard to the criminal cases pending against the candidate. 116.3. If a candidate is contesting an election on the ticket of a particular party, he/she is required to inform the party about the criminal cases pending against him/her. 116.4. The political party concerned shall be obligated to put up on its website the aforesaid information pertaining to candidates having criminal antecedents. 116.5. The candidate as well as the political party concerned shall issue a declaration in the widely circulated newspapers in the locality about the antecedents of the candidate and also give wide publicity in the electronic media. When we say wide publicity, we mean that the same shall be done at least thrice after filing of the nomination papers."
(3.) On a perusal of the documents placed on record and after submissions of counsel, it appears that over the last four general elections, there has been an alarming increase in the incidence of criminals in politics. In 2004, 24% of the Members of Parliament had criminal cases pending against them; in 2009, that went up to 30%; in 2014 to 34%; and in 2019 as many as 43% of MPs had criminal cases pending against them.;