Thursday, June 30 2005 12:26 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Expressing alarm over criminal elements creeping into various levels of governance, eminent personalities, including former Prime Minister I K Gujral and former Chief Justice J S Verma, yesterday (Jun 29, 2005) launched an initiative for a fight against it.

"Criminality in politics poses immediate dangers to our governance and more seriously, long term threats to the very legitimacy of our institutions of democracy whether at the Union or State level," they said in a statement.

Releasing the statement, Gujral, former Governor Ved Marwah, former Lok Sabha Secretary General Subhash Kashyap and veteran journalist B G Varghese said that theirs was a voice of despair and was still not sure how to move forward to achieve their goal.

They said they were keen on working for a consensus by initiating a national debate on the subject. Asserting that there was an urgent need to "arrest this menace to rule of law and democracy", they appealed to all political parties to stop supporting any candidates for elected or even party positions with known criminal activities, even if not convicted.

They observed, "Even the judiciary has come under a cloud in recent period raising doubts about the integrity of all the major institutions of governance."

Former Ambassador to USA Naresh Chandra, former UN under secretary general Nitin Desai, former Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce (FICCI) president D N Patodia, Former Director of IIT Chennai P V Indresan and Former President of Centre for Policy Research Pai Panandiker were the prominent among the other signatories of the statement.