The criminalisation of politics is not only a problem of tainted candidates, but a crisis of constitutional governance.” Discuss.

Ambedkar warned the Constituent Assembly that constitutional morality is not a natural sentiment — it has to be cultivated. Sixty-five years later, 46% of newly elected MPs in the 18th Lok Sabha (2024) carry declared criminal cases — the highest proportion in parliamentary history. This is not a problem of tainted individuals inside a healthy system; it is a crisis of the system itself. criminalisation of politics a crisis of constitutional governance

• Separation of powers is functionally compromised: criminally charged legislators become ministers who then direct the very police and prosecution investigating them.
• Art. 105 privilege is weaponised: designed to protect deliberative freedom, stretched to immunise corruption within democracy; overruled only in Sita Soren (2024) after 26 years.
• Prosecution machinery is politically captured: legislators who control state governments simultaneously face investigation by the police machinery they control.
• Legislative oath becomes constitutional fiction: a minister facing kidnapping charges taking the Art. 75(4) oath to uphold the Constitution converts a constitutional ceremony into a procedural formality.
• Public trust is empirically collapsing — Lokniti-CSDS surveys show declining institutional trust in legislatures, with criminally charged legislators cited as a primary cause.

What credible reform requires

• Disqualification at charge framing, not conviction: 2nd ARC recommendation eliminates the 10-15 year impunity corridor while requiring judicial application of mind before disqualification attaches.
• Fast-track courts for electoral offences: Public Interest Foundation (2019) directed special MP/MLA courts; only 12 exist against 4,442 pending cases as of 2024.
• Criminalise false affidavit disclosure: S.125A RPA provides 6 months imprisonment for false nomination affidavits; zero prosecutions in 22 years; make it a strict liability offence with automatic disqualification.
• ECI power to reject nominations of repeat offenders: Law Commission 244th Report (2014) recommended ECI scrutiny power for candidates with multiple pending serious charges; unimplemented.
• Lifetime ban for heinous offences: ECI proposed lifetime disqualification for conviction in crimes against women and heinous offences, replacing the current 6-year post-release limit.
• Independent prosecution authority for electoral offences: remove electoral crime prosecution from state police control; create an independent Director of Electoral Prosecutions reporting to ECI, insulated from the legislators it prosecutes.

A legislature cannot cleanse itself and the regulated cannot design their own regulation. The crisis of constitutional governance ends when constitutional power returns to the people it was always supposed to belong to.