The Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt has been refused the right to contest the parliamentary Lok Sabha elections by India's supreme court. Dutt was sentenced to six years in jail in 2007 after being found guilty of possessing firearms acquired from terrorists involved in bomb blasts in Mumbai in 1993. The blasts, believed to have been carried out in retaliation for the massacre of Muslims in the city earlier in the year, killed at least 250 and injured 700.
Dutt, who was cleared of involvement in the blasts themselves, was granted bail in November 2007. He announced plans to stand for election in Lucknow, the capital of the electorally-important state Uttar Pradesh, as a candidate of the Samajwadi Party (SP) in early 2009. However, the Supreme Court ruled that the actor's sentence could not be suspended for the purposes of the election.
The Samajwadi Party's general secretary Amar Singh said that a member of the ruling Congress Party had earlier threatened to cancel Dutt's bail if he continued to stand for the seat. The party has also courted controversy recently by forging links with two leaders said to have been involved in the destruction of the Babri Masjid mosque by Hindu nationalists in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh in 1992. The SP, which gains much of its support from the Muslim minority in the state, had previously been strongly critical of the handling of the mosque's demolition.
Seven Bollywood actors stood as candidates in the 2004 parliamentary elections with as many as 29 others involved in campaigning, and many more are expected to join the fray in the forthcoming polls. They frequently draw large crowds to political rallies: the actress Shatabdi Roy was recently injured after a podium gave way under the weight of her fans.
Security alerts raise concerns throughout the country
A motorbike bomb exploded less than a mile from an election meeting held by the foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee, in Guwahati, the capital of the eastern state of Assam, killing one person and injuring sixteen. Police have blamed the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), which has been fighting for greater autonomy for Assam since 1979, for the blast. The Telegraph (Kolkata) reports that this incident bore several similarities to an attack on the Home Minister P Chidambaram in January this year.
Reports of suspected LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) militants entering Kerala by sea have led to a heightened security alert across the southern state. Security forces are concerned about the involvement of Indians from Kerala and the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu in assisting the militants. The LTTE's plenipotentiary for international relations Selvaraja Pathmanathan has stated that he hopes to win the support of the Indian government by leveraging the militant organisation's popularity in Tamil Nadu. A recent poll by the news network NDTV showed that 66 per cent of respondents in Tamil Nadu believe that the Indian government should support the LTTE's demand for an independent Tamil state in the north of Sri Lanka.
Security levels have been tightened in all properties of the Taj Group, which owns the talismanic Taj Mahal hotel that was targeted in the Mumbai attacks in November 2008, after a threat was sent to the group's Fisherman's Cove resort in Chennai. The email, which came from an unidentified source, said that an explosion was to take place in the Taj Hotel in south Mumbai.
Bribery rife in election campaigning
Pragya Singh, writing in Outlook, claims that politicians' use of bribery to win votes is increasing dramatically during campaigning for the upcoming elections. The article estimates that a constituency with four candidates will see between US$ 1 to 3 million spent during the polls, of which only US$ 200,000 is officially authorised. The bribing of voters has become a ritual, according to Bhibhu Mohapatra, a fellow at the India Development Foundation.
The comedian Jaspal Bhatti, who founded his Recession Party on 31 March to contest elections in Chandigarh, the capital of the state of Punjab, has said that his party will seek to legalise "all underhand and illegal deals done by political parties and politicians" after assuming power "through means fair and foul." The party's manifesto includes pledges to establish a quota for fools in parliament and to encourage slums around Chandigarh to help the party win votes in future elections.
