Manoj Mitta | TNN
New Delhi: If horse-trading is going on in the run-up to the confidence vote, as alleged by the Left, then it is only the bribe givers who are at the risk of being hauled up for corruption. Thanks to the Supreme Court verdict in the JMM bribery case 10 years ago, the bribe taking MPs enjoy constitutional immunity so that their freedom to vote in the Lok Sabha as they like is not impaired.
All that MPs will have to bear in mind is that when they take bribes to bail out the government or even to vote against it, they should ensure that they actually cast their vote. For, according to the controversial judgment delivered by Justice S B Bharucha, it is the action of casting the vote that will save them from criminal liability. Such is the expansive interpretation given to Article 105(2) of the Constitution, which says that no MP shall be liable to any court proceedings in respect of “anything said or any vote given by him in Parliament.”
To be fair to it, the apex court was “acutely conscious of the seriousness of the offence” that the alleged bribe takers were said to have committed in the JMM bribery case to help the Narasimha Rao government defeat a no-confidence motion in 1993.
“If true, they bartered a most solemn trust committed to them by those they represented,” Justice Bharucha said, “By reason of the lucre that they received, they enabled a government to survive. Even so, they are entitled to the protection that the Constitution plainly affords them. Our sense of indignation should not lead us the construe the Constitution narrowly, impairing the guarantee to effective parliamentary participation and debate.”
