Why did Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, not say anything on immediate disqualification of convicted legislators? When Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi came out on September 27 against his own party to criticise the ordinance for protecting convicted law-makers, the response from Modi was ridicule for “shahzada (prince)”. But he was curiously silent on whether the ordinance should actually be torn up and thrown away, as Gandhi suggested at a press conference. The reason is simple. Some of Modi’s aides and too many BJP legislators in Gujarat face the same fate as Lalu Prasad of the RJD and Rasheed Masood of the Congress. “Of the 182 candidates who got elected in the Gujarat assembly in 2012, 31% or 57 MLAs have criminal cases against them,” said Jagdeep Chhokar of Gujarat Election Watch (GEW). GEW is an initiative of the Association for Democratic Reforms, set up by professors of the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad and civil society members. According to GEW, of the 57 legislators, 24 have “very serious” charges against them. And among the top 10, six are from the BJP stable. Not only MLAs, sitting BJP MPs, such as Prabhatsinh Chauhan from Panchmahal and Vithal Radadia from Porbandar, are facing serious criminal charges. The most crucial blow that Modi may have to take if things do not go his way is disqualification of his closest aide, BJP general secretary in charge of Uttar Pradesh Amit Shah.
Posted on: Fri, 04 Oct 2013 09:06:35 +0000
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