The Nexus of Politics, Crime and Business

In one line

Criminal money buys elections, elected office protects the people who paid, and the Constitution disqualifies a candidate only on conviction, which is why the problem outlives every judgment about it.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: "the nexus of politics, crime and business" is the University's own phrase, set twice on the eleven printed papers this book was built from. It describes a three-cornered relationship documented by the Vohra Committee in 1993: criminal syndicates finance and protect politicians, politicians and officials shield the syndicates, and business money moves between them. The Constitution's own machinery is thin. Articles 102(1) and 191(1) list the disqualifications and leave the rest to Parliament under clause (e), and the Supreme Court held in Public Interest Foundation v. Union of India that it cannot itself add a disqualification on the framing of a charge, because "the Court cannot make the law." What the Court could do it did: it ordered disclosure, under the voter's right to know in article 19(1)(a), and recommended that Parliament legislate.

What the phrase describes

Take the three corners one at a time, because a good answer separates them.

Crime to politics. A person with money and muscle finds that a legislature seat converts both into immunity. He funds a campaign, or contests himself.

Politics to crime. Office gives control of the police, of prosecutions, of contracts and of transfers. That control is worth paying for, and it is the return on the investment.

Business to both. Elections cost money that is not accounted; the accounted sources are inadequate; the unaccounted sources want something in return. [The Funding of Elections] is the other half of this chapter, and neither half makes sense alone.

The Vohra Committee

The Government of India constituted a committee on 9 July 1993 under the chairmanship of the Union Home Secretary, N.N. Vohra. Its report was submitted on 5 October 1993. Its findings are in this book only as they are quoted in Supreme Court judgments, which is where the passages below come from; the report itself has not been read here, and nothing is attributed to it beyond what those judgments set out.

Paragraph 6.2 of the report, quoted in full in the Supreme Court's judgment of 2 May 2002 on the disclosure of candidates' antecedents, the case treated in [The Voter's Right to Know], records the Director of the Intelligence Bureau's account of "a rapid spread and growth of criminal gangs, armed seas, drug Mafias, smuggling gang, drug peddlers and economic lobbies in the country" which had "developed an extensive network of contacts with the bureaucrats/Government functionaries at the local levels, politicians, media persons and strategically located individuals in the non State sector."