Date:09/05/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/05/09/stories/2007050904801002.htm

Opinion - Letters to the Editor

Delayed justice?

The conviction of RJD MP Mohammed Shahabuddin for kidnapping a CPI (ML) worker in 1999 (May 6) is another example of criminalisation of politics.

What is worrying is that it has taken eight years for the judgment to be pronounced.

B.S. Ganesh,
Bangalore

* * *

With more and more reports in the media of elected representatives being on the wrong side of the law, one cannot but appreciate the wisdom of Rajendra Prasad who, in his address to the Constituent Assembly of India, said: "I would have liked to have some qualifications laid down for members of the legislatures. It is anomalous that we should insist upon high qualifications for those who administer or help in administering the law but none for those who make it, except that they are elected.

"A law giver requires intellectual equipment but even more than that capacity to take a balanced view of things, to act independently and above all to be true to those fundamental things of life — in one word, to have character."

P.R.V. Raghavan,
Mumbai