JUDGMENT :

Dipak Misra, CJI.

In Yogendra Kumar Jaiswal and others v. State of Bihar and others, (2016) 3 SCC 183 the Court opined:-

"Corruption, a 'noun' when assumes all the characteristics of a Verb', becomes self-infective and also develops resistance to antibiotics. In such a situation the disguised protagonist never puts a Hamletian question-"to be or not to be"-but marches ahead with perverted proclivity-sans concern, sans care for collective interest, and irrefragably without conscience. In a way, corruption becomes a national economic terror."

2. The constitutional functionaries, who have taken the pledge to uphold the constitutional principles, are charged with the responsibility to ensure that the existing political framework does not get tainted with the evil of corruption. However, despite this heavy mandate prescribed by our Constitution, our Indian democracy, which is the world's largest democracy, has seen a steady increase in the level of criminalization that has been creeping into the Indian polity. This unsettlingly increasing trend of criminalization of politics, to which our country has been a witness, tends to disrupt the constitutional ethos and strikes at the ver