Congress suspends Himachal legislator

Shimla, Jan 16 (IANS) The Congress Wednesday suspended a legislator in Himachal Pradesh who has been booked for murder by the Haryana Police.

"The Congress has suspended Ram Kumar Chaudhary," state Congress president Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu said here.

He is one of four suspects in the murder of a 24-year-old woman in Panchkula in Haryana Nov 22 and is now on police remand.

Chaudhary is a first-time legislator from Doon in Solan district.

"This is my first decision after assuming charge," Sukhu said. He took charge as the state party president Tuesday.

At last it seems the political parties seem to be starting to take some action. But the action taken is insufficient.

Why only suspension?

The person should be dismissed from the party on the basis of the above and his membership of the assembly should be cancelled.

Further, the election commission should immediately take action so that he cannot stand for any elections unless he is declared innocent by the courts of the land. With a population, surely we can find a few thousand honest, good people to rule the country instead of falling back on criminals having extortion, kidnapping, dacoity, rape and murder charges against them.

All political parties should comb through their list of existing MLAs and MPs and ask those having any of the above charges against their names should be asked to resign. With crime rising so rapidly and violently, we cannot have our rulers to have any blemishes against their names.

Don't ask me why our MPs and MLAs should be treated differently from ordinary citizens?

We are not treating them differently, we are treating them the same as we would an ordinary citizen.

would you employ any person in your organisation if he had a criminal background? No!

So why treat these people differently?

They are supposed to be even better than ordinary citizens since they are to rule the country. Hence, the bar should be set much higher for them.