NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday observed that the criminalisation of politics is a very major issue while hearing a PIL filed by lawyer Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay over seeking a lifetime ban of MPs/MLAs who have been convicted of criminal offences.
As per existing law, convicted politicians are banned from polls for six years. The petitioner, also a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader has moved the apex court and filed the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) challenging the constitutional validity of Sections 8 and 9 of the Representation of the People Act (RP Act), 1951, which govern MP/MLA’s disqualification due to convictions.
After hearing the plea of Upadhyay, the two-judge bench of the apex court, led by Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice Manmohan, asked the Centre and Election Commission of India (ECI) to file its detailed reply and fixed the matter for further hearing to March 4.
It also made it clear that if the Union of India (UoI) failed to file the reply in the case, then the court may proceed to decide the matter without government response.
The apex court also asked Attorney General (AG) R Venkataramani, a top law officer of the Central government to assist the court in the plea.
During the course of the hearing on Monday, the Court said the ECI counsel, Sidhant that criminalisation of politics is a very major issue and hence the ECI must have applied its mind and come out with a better solution than what is canvassed before us.
He replied, "Certainly!" and said that he would place that before Lordships.
Senior lawyer, Vikas Singh, for Upadhyay, said that the question is whether a person convicted can be an office bearer of a recognised political party?
"But sadly, today, the law is MPs / MLAs can commit murder but they can be chairman of a nationally recognised political party. These issues should be considered by the court," Singh said and requested the bench to address the re-entry of convicted persons into politics.
Senior advocate Vijay Hansaria, appearing as amicus curiae (Friend of the court) to assist the court, pointed out major hurdles including special MP/MLA courts handling other matters, excessive adjournments, and lack of strict procedural enforcement.