NEW DELHI: Data on criminalisation of politics presented to Supreme Court on Monday showed that of the 543 Lok Sabha MPs, as many as 251 face criminal cases, and of them, 170 are charged with offenses that are punishable with an imprisonment of five or more years.
Collating the data from various high courts, amicus curiae and senior advocate Vijay Hansaria submitted a 83-page report to a bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Manmohan. It stated that 19 out of 20 MPs (95%) from Kerala faced criminal charges, and 11 of them faced serious cases.
Of the 17 MPs from Telangana, 14 faced criminal charges (82%), Odisha 76% (16 of 21), Jharkhand 71% (10 of 14), Tamil Nadu 67% (26 of 39), around 50% of MPs from other major states – Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Bihar, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh – faced criminal cases.
Haryana (10 MPs) and Chhattisgarh (11 MPs) have just one MP each facing criminal charges, Punjab 2 out of 13, Assam 3 out of 14, Delhi 3 out of 7, Rajasthan 4 out of 25, Gujarat 5 out of 25, and Madhya Pradesh 9 out of 29 MPs faced criminal charges.
Hansaria told the court that though SC had in 2023 directed the jurisdictional HCs to set up a bench to monitor the progress of trial in criminal cases pending against sitting/former legislators, there were many states which are yet to set up designated courts for this purpose and because of which, in some states, trial in such cases is pending for more than two decades.
He said as of Jan 1, as many as 4,732 criminal cases are pending trial against accused persons who are either sitting or former legislators. Uttar Pradesh topped the list with 1,171 such cases pending. Other states having large pendency of such cases are Odisha 457, Bihar 448, Maharashtra 442, Madhya Pradesh 326, Kerala 315, Telangana 313, Karnataka 255, Tamil Nadu 220, Jharkhand 133 and Delhi 124.
Out of the 4,732 criminal cases, 863 have been registered against sitting or former legislators for violation of prohibitory orders put in place under Section 144 of Crpc, a phenomenon peculiar to Himachal Pradesh (307 cases), Bihar (175), Telangana (112) and Maharashtra (96). Delhi has registered just four such cases.
When Hansaria complained of liberal adjournment, non-appearance of accused and additional judicial work being given to the designated courts for conducting trials of cases against sitting and former MPs, Justices Datta and Manmohan said since the order was passed by a three-judge bench, it would be better if a bench of same strength dealt with the issue. It referred the matter to the CJI for constituting an appropriate bench.