Why Swamy, Sidhu don't deserve Rajya Sabha nomination

On April 22, 2016, the government nominated six people to the Rajya Sabha. They are BJP leaders Subramanian Swamy and Navjot Singh Sidhu, member of the erstwhile National Advisory Council Narendra Jadhav, Malayalam actor Suresh Gopi, journalist Swapan Dasgupta and boxer Mary Kom.

Article 80 of the Constitution has a provision for the nomination of 12 members to the Upper House. Clause 3 of the Article says that the members to be nominated by the President “shall consist of persons having special knowledge or practical experience in respect of such matters as the following, namely: literature, science, art and social service.”

By adopting the principle of nomination, the Constitution has ensured that the nation must also receive the legislative services of certain distinguished people who have earned a distinction in their respective fields of activity, but who may not like to face the rough and tumble of an election.

Also read: Swamy in Rajya Sabha is Modi's way of reining in Jaitley

Now for the question on whether the six people nominated this time around are really distinguished. The answer is an emphatic "yes" because each one of them is eminent in his/her own field. What is not very clear, however, is whether all of them would be uncomfortable of the rough and tumble of general elections.

Two of the six - Subramanian Swamy and Navjot Singh Sidhu - are hardcore politicians. Swamy was elected three times to the Lok Sabha and twice to the Rajya Sabha.

Sidhu got elected to the Lok Sabha three times as well. But to speak in the government's defence, nominating a practising politician is not unprecedented. In the past too, many of them like Jagmohan, Bhupinder Singh Mann, Prakash Ambedkar and Ghulam Rasool Kar have got entry to the Upper House through this route.

But the most controversial was the nomination of Mani Shankar Aiyar by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government after he lost the Lok Sabha elections in 2009. Successive governments smuggled in politicians to the Rajya Sabha by painting them as social workers. Our Constitution doesn’t bar them from using this route. But is this the correct practice? Is this what the makers of the Constitution envisaged while making this provision? Certainly not.

Also read: Why giving any job to Subramanian Swamy is a headache for Modi

Lauding the makers of our Constitution for having this provision, India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru said in the Lok Sabha on May 13, 1953, "They do not represent political parties or anything, but they represent really the high watermark of literature or art or culture or whatever it may be.”

In the cases of Swamy and Sidhu, both are active members of the BJP. A nominated member is allowed six months to decide if he wants to join a political party after he has taken his seat in the House. Swamy and Sidhu, however, are already party members. There is another reason Swamy and Sidhu shouldn’t have got the Rajya Sabha nomination.

A known hater of the Gandhi family, Swamy has been a man of controversies. He not only survives, but thrives on controversies. In 2011, Harvard University had removed two courses taught by Swamy after a controversial editorial written by him was deemed offensive towards Muslims.

In his piece Swamy made sweeping remarks against Muslims and proposed depriving them of the vote unless they declared their families were converts from Hinduism.

When the Narendra Modi government nominated him as a distinguished person for the Rajya Sabha, did it factor in this aspect of his distinguished persona? And can his views be taken as non-partisan? Can Swamy take the oath of upholding the Constitution of India, which has words like “secularism” in its preamble? Swamy may well have distinguished himself but is he a deserving candidate for a Rajya Sabha nomination?

If the Manmohan Singh government was found guilty of nominating a Gandhi family loyalist, Mani Shankar Aiyar, Narendra Modi is guilty of nominating a Gandhi family hater in Swamy. Both are classic examples of blatant misuse of the provision of nominating a Rajya Sabha member.

Sidhu had made way for Arun Jaitley to contest from Amritsar in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Reports say that he was promised a Rajya Sabha seat in lieu of his "sacrifice" but he has been waiting too long for the quid pro quo.

Upset over it, the former cricketer was even contemplating joining the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). His nomination to the Rajya Sabha is seen as a ploy by the BJP to stop him from doing so. But a stronger reason for not nominating Sidhu would be that one Gurnam Singh was beaten to death by Sidhu and his friend Rupinder Singh Sandhu in Patiala on December 27, 1988.

He was convicted in 2006 and sentenced to a three-year prison term by the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

This forced him to resign from his Lok Sabha seat. Sidhu then appealed to the Supreme Court, and it passed a stay order on his conviction, paving the way for him to contest the by-poll, which he won. The fact is that Sidhu has not been absolved from the case and he still stands accused.

The apex court's stay order is only on his conviction by the high court. Did the government of India keep this fact in mind while nominating Sidhu for the Rajya Sabha? Should a person accused of murder be made a member of the Upper House using the nomination route?

Technically, there is no problem but had the government applied some moral and ethical filters it would have seen that Sidhu and Swamy would not have passed the test. But then the standards of morality and ethics are fickle in politics, pragmatism is more the need.