But in clear violation of the above ruling of the court, the current UPA government, despite resistance from some political quarters like the Aam Admi Party, Biju Janata Dal and Janata Dal (United), announced a new ordinance that granted immunity to convicted politicians, allowing them to carry out official responsibilities and appear in parliament or state assembly sessions provided they managed to get a stay order from a higher court within a stipulated period of 90 days.

Restrictions, however, were that these politicians would neither be able to vote nor draw salaries as regular government employees.

This does not come as a surprise considering the number of politicians of the UPA II involved in the innumerable scams that have been thrown up in the last four years and the need of central government to protect its membership of convicts who are significant allies to keep itself well above the magic number of 272, the seats needed to claim majority in the Lok Sabha.

The drama unfolded when the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was confabulating with the U.S. lawmakers and his Pakistani counterpart in New York, relaxed in the belief that the ordinance was well on its way to Presidential consent, and back in New Delhi the Congress heir apparent, Rahul Gandhi, threw a fit.

A usually shy Rahul, never known for airing opinions on national issues, called for a press meet and bellowed, “My opinion on the ordinance is that it is complete nonsense and it should be torn up and thrown out. I feel, personally feel, that what our government has done as far as this ordinance is concerned is wrong.”

As the “young PM in making” clearly did not see eye to eye with Singh, opposition parties and coalition partners like National Conference leader Farookh Abdullah strongly minded Rahul’s public veto of the ordinance, calling it an abject debasement of the government and parliamentary processes.

Bharatiya Janta Party’s prime ministerial candidate in next year’s general elections, Narendra Modi, declared Rahul’s act as one that negated prestige and stature of the prime minister, and also revealed the extent of control the Gandhi family wielded on the Prime Minister of India.

Immediately on his return Singh tried his best to retrieve the situation, held a closed door meeting with Rahul and in fifteen minutes a unanimous Cabinet approval was obtained to declare the new ordinance null and void.

Thereafter the Information and Broadcasting Minister, Manish Tewari announced, “The Union Cabinet at its meeting today unanimously decided that both the ordinance with regards to certain sections of the Representation of the People Act as well as the Bill would be withdrawn.”

Tewari elaborated justification of the government’s stand, “Democracy is not a monolithic authoritarian system of government. We respect the diversity of views, and there was a view that was articulated by Rahul Gandhi and possibly based on a wider feedback. Under those circumstances, the (earlier) cabinet decision was reconsidered and it was decided that we would withdraw both the bill and the ordinance. It demonstrates that you have a government which is not authoritarian in nature.”

The sudden reversal to erase the new ordinance has produced another set of annoyed allies whose stakes have been hit hard, chief among these are NCP supremo, Sharad Pawar, and the Samajwadi Party.

Though BJP President Rajnath Singh expressed satisfaction over this Cabinet reversal, Ravi Shankar Prasad of the same political party said, “It has nothing to do with morality, legality, validity constitutionality. It is the sheer power of dynasty before which the prime minister and the cabinet meekly submitted. The dynasty was constrained to intervene just to create a facade of the stand having been taken,” he said, terming the entire episode as a “theatre of the absurd.”

The immediate impact of the burial of controversial ordinance has been disqualification of Congress Rajya Sabha MP, Rasheed Masood, and Rashtraiya Janata Dal leaders, Lalu Prasad and Jagdish Sharma, who were recently convicted, and for laying down procedures for finding their replacements the Law Ministry’s opinion has been sought.

The media made much of the withdrawal of the ordinance and while Congress sympathizers would liken Rahul’s move to have been guided by conscience and thus having earned the party a moral ground vis-a-vis foes, diehard opponents prefer to define it as a drama that came a bit it too late in the day, staged in response to a swelling public outrage.

No one can contest the fact that tentacles of criminalization has degenerated the entire political system of the country and majority of the states affected include Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Delhi, Chhatisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra.

A survey by a non government organization, Association of Democratic Rights, shows that of the 4,800 MPs and MLAs screened, about 30 percent face criminal charges and of the 403 MLAs who won Uttar Pradesh assembly polls in 2013, 189 have criminal cases pending against them and 98 alone have been charged with murder or rape, or both.

In the last two decades, matters have become worse with the mafia that helped capture booths for politicians being awarded tickets to stand for elections and now criminal elements financing political campaigns to which can be added the factor of growing corporate financing of elections.

Not a single party can claim itself to be free of these criminal elements and as the study points, there exists a strong correlation between a candidate’s criminal status and his/her financial status and there has been a marked increase in their wealth at the time of re-contesting of elections.

“At the time of contesting elections for first time while the average assets of 62,847 candidates, stood at Rs. 0.0137 billion, those of MPs and MLAs stood at Rs. 0.0383 billion… Of the 4,181 re-contesting candidates, 3,173 showed an average wealth increase of Rs. 0.0234 billion, with their average assets rising from Rs. 0.0174 billion to Rs. 0.0408 billion,” read the survey.

In light of such situations, it is evident that political will to check criminalization and corruption would be missing and thus the apex court needed to act up and thus came up with its July ruling.

Soli Sorabjee, former Attorney General clarifies, “Contesting elections is not a fundamental right but a statutory one. Those against whom charges are framed by a court for serious offences should not be allowed to contest elections.”

He adds that present rules allow auditing of cash donations to parties amounting to above Rs. 20, 000 per donor, thus political parties that are actually collecting billions, claim that hundreds of donors gave under Rs. 20,000.

No matter how much Indians may like to call themselves a contender of a superpower status in the global order, it is not a myth that it will need a slew of reforms at every level and systemic changes to gain a foothold on the tarmac of a truly modern and developed nation.

In this context of the reform being debated, Gurudas Dasgupta states, “The government should make decriminalization of politics a national priority. The judiciary and the government have to build safeguards against a nexus of money and power in politics.”