INDIA:The conviction of a federal Indian minister earlier this week for abducting and murdering his aide 12 years ago has once again triggered the issue of "criminalisation" in national politics as nearly a quarter of the country's 545 MPs have a criminal record.
According to Lok Sabha or India's elected lower house of parliament records, every fourth member faces charges ranging from murder to rape, kidnapping, fraud and cheating.
Shibu Soren, head of the regional JMM party, a member of the Congress Party-led federal coalition, resigned as coal minister on Tuesday after a Delhi court found him guilty of conspiracy in the 1994 kidnapping and murder of his former private secretary, Shashinath Jha.
Prosecutors said Mr Jha was killed for blackmailing the minister over bribe-taking.
Four others associated with Soren were also found guilty of murdering Mr Jha and burying his body in Jharkhand's state capital, Ranchi, in eastern India. The body was exhumed years later.
Sentencing of the guilty five, including the 62-year-old minister, potentially carries the death penalty or life imprisonment.
"Earlier we were trying to focus attention on the criminalisation of politics. But now we have the criminalisation of the council of ministers," Opposition leader and former deputy prime minister Lal Krishna Advani said, leading the furore in parliament against Soren's admittance into the cabinet.
Soren had quit the coal portfolio in 2004 following charges of inciting violence during a tribal protest in 1975 in which at least 10 people died. But trading on coalition politics compulsions, he recently rejoined government.
In the absence of any policy to keep out the criminally charged MPs, prime minister Manmohan Singh has drawn the line at criminal conviction. He recently said the country needed a law to define the meaning "criminal" and who should or should not be a minister. "The PM's policy is clear. If convicted, no one can remain in office," junior minister Prithviraj Chavan said.
But all parties said putting up candidates with a criminal background in elections remains a "political compulsion".
"Winability in elections is the criterion, no matter how much we may try to keep them [ criminals] out," senior Opposition politician Arun Jaitley said.
Some Indian MPs had even fought and won election from jail where they were serving sentences for various crimes.