The campaign’s aim is to provide a platform to people to make a conscious choice about casting their votes in favour of a
representative with a clean record.
Some of Mumbai’s well-known personalities and corporate captains have gotten together to support a campaign, ‘No criminals in politics’, that seeks to enable citizens to vote for the right person.
The campaign, launched by a non-governmental organisation (NGO), the Pubic Interest Foundation, aims to stop citizens across India from voting for political candidates with criminal records and stop political parties from fielding persons with criminal records.
A number of NGOs, citizen forums and corporate leaders got together at the Rabindra Natya Mandir, Dadar, in south Mumbai to support this campaign. “It is a public movement for a cleaner and responsible government,” said Sucheta Dalal, a senior journalist and coordinator of the campaign, who spoke up at the public meeting.
Naukri.com founder Sanjeev Bikchandani said that after the 26/11 attacks, corporate leaders have discussed the need for clean politicians. “This is the burning need of the country,” he added.
Ajit Ranade of Action for Democratic Rights, who has been active in tracking the records of political candidates for the past decade, emphasised that peoples’ awareness about their political representatives at various levels will initiate them in stopping criminalisation of politics.
Meera Sanyal, India head of ABN & AMRO and who is contesting the elections as an independent candidate from Mumbai South, spoke about the need for qualified and accountable candidates.
Also lending support to the ‘No criminals in politics’ campaign are Confederation of Indian Industry deputy chairman Arun Nanda, BJP member Shaina NC, Ashank Desai of NASSCOM, president of Loksatta Maharashtra Surendra Srivastav, and Mona Patel Shah, the Professional Party of India candidate from Mumbai South.
According to available data, in 2004, over 20% of the elected candidates had criminal records. The website
www.NoCriminals.org offers information about the various contestants in the constituencies for the elections.
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