Politics runs on winning elections and holding power. Ethics asks what is right, even when it isn’t the popular choice. In India’s democracy, these two forces are always in tension. The exam expects you to know the key ideas around this tension.
✊ Must Know
1. Criminalisation of Politics
- Why Political ethics studies what counts as right and wrong conduct in political life. This covers how leaders should use power, how they should treat opponents, and what promises and duties they owe citizens.
- Criminalisation of Politics Criminalisation of politics refers to the growing number of elected representatives in India who face criminal charges. The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) publishes regular reports tracking this. These reports are based on candidates’ own sworn affidavits filed with the Election Commission.
- Story ADR’s analysis of the 2024 Lok Sabha found that roughly 46% of newly elected MPs had declared pending criminal cases against themselves. That figure has risen with each Lok Sabha since ADR began tracking affidavits in 2004.
2. Electoral Ethics
- Electoral Ethics Electoral ethics covers fair conduct during elections: not bribing voters, not spreading hate speech. It also means following the Model Code of Conduct set by the Election Commission of India during campaign season.
- Story During state election campaigns, the ECI has repeatedly issued show-cause notices and campaigning bans to leaders of major parties. These come for hate-speech or communal remarks made on the campaign trail, evidence that the Model Code carries real, if imperfect, teeth.
3. Populism
- Instead Populism is a political style that claims to speak directly for “the ordinary people” against a supposedly corrupt elite. It raises an ethical question: does it serve real public interest? Or does it just chase short-term popularity at the cost of sound long-term policy?
- Story The Supreme Court’s hearings on the “freebie culture” case, filed in 2022, are a live example. The Court asked the Election Commission and NITI Aayog to help form an expert panel on pre-election giveaways. The goal was a direct attempt to draw a line between welfare and vote-buying populism.
📘 Good to Know
4. Disqualification Law: Lily Thomas Ruling
- Disqualification Law The Representation of the People Act, 1951, disqualifies a convicted lawmaker from holding office. A 2013 Supreme Court ruling, Lily Thomas v. Union of India, closed a well-known loophole. It removed an earlier legal shield that let convicted MPs and MLAs keep their seats while appealing.
- Story The ruling’s real-world force showed up almost immediately. Within months, a sitting Lok Sabha MP convicted in a long-running fodder-scam case lost his seat right away, instead of being able to hold onto it through a pending appeal. That was exactly the outcome Lily Thomas was meant to force.
5. Anti-Defection Law
- Anti-Defection Law Defection is when an elected member switches parties after being elected, often for personal gain. India’s Anti-Defection Law, the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution, added in 1985, disqualifies a member who defects. Large-scale defections, managed through legal exceptions, still remain a live ethical and political issue.
- Story In 2020, a large group of Madhya Pradesh MLAs resigned rather than formally “defecting.” The move toppled the state government while sidestepping the Tenth Schedule entirely. It’s a well-known example of the law’s merger-and-split exceptions being used exactly as critics warn: to defeat its own purpose.
6. Vote-Bank Politics, and 7. Statesmanship Versus Politicking
- Instead Vote-bank politics means making promises to a specific caste, religious, or community group purely to win their votes. It doesn’t happen because the policy serves the wider public good. It’s a commonly cited example of ethics being overridden by short-term political calculation.
- Story Election-eve announcements of new caste or community-specific quotas are a recurring pattern. Timed just before voting rather than as part of a considered, evidence-based policy process, political scientists cite these as vote-bank politics rather than genuine social-justice reform.
- Instead A useful distinction is statesmanship versus pure politicking. Statesmanship takes a longer view, sometimes accepting short-term unpopularity for the country’s long-term good. Politicking means decisions made mainly to win the next election. Civil-service ethics discussions often use this pair to frame good political conduct.
- Story A government that raises fuel prices or trims a popular subsidy to protect fiscal health is a textbook statesmanship example, especially when it knows the move will cost votes. The opposite, rolling back a needed but unpopular reform right before an election, is the textbook politicking example.
💎 Great to Know
8. Machiavelli and Political Realism
- Machiavelli Political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli wrote The Prince in 1532. He argued that a ruler may need to act against conventional morality, lying, breaking promises, using fear. The goal was to hold onto power and keep the state stable.
- Why His name gave rise to the term “Machiavellian.” People now use it for any political conduct seen as cynically putting power above ethics.
9. The 2nd ARC Report on Ethics in Governance
- ARC Report India’s own 2nd Administrative Reforms Commission report on “Ethics in Governance” specifically flagged the criminalisation of politics and money power in elections as major threats to clean governance. It recommended stronger disclosure and faster trials for cases against sitting lawmakers.
- Story The Commission’s call for fast-track courts to try cases against sitting MPs and MLAs took over a decade to gain real traction. Special courts for this purpose were eventually set up in several states, a slow but direct example of an ARC recommendation being acted on.
10. The Bureaucrat’s Own Loyalty Tension
- Link A frequent civil-service ethics theme: the tension a bureaucrat faces between political loyalty to the government of the day and constitutional loyalty to the rule of law and public interest. This is the same tension discussed under “non-partisanship” in an earlier article on this site. Here, it’s seen from the political side, not the administrative side.
- Story A civil servant who refuses a minister’s verbal instruction to act outside the law is a standard example this theme is tested through. They insist instead on a written order they can be held accountable for.
Current Affairs
Recent Developments
Supreme Court strips Speaker’s immunity in Telangana defection case, 31 July 2025
- SC Ruling On 31 July 2025, in Padi Kaushik Reddy v. State of Telangana, a bench led by CJI B.R. Gavai delivered a key ruling. It held that a Legislative Assembly Speaker does not enjoy constitutional immunity under Articles 122 or 212 while acting as a tribunal under the Tenth Schedule. The Court directed the Telangana Speaker to decide pending disqualification petitions against 10 BRS-to-INC defector MLAs within three months. Source: Verdictum.
- So What This directly updates this article’s Anti-Defection Law card. It confirms Speakers can be held to strict, judicially-enforced timelines rather than sitting indefinitely on defection petitions, a long-standing loophole this article’s own “large-scale defections” line describes.
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