NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday issued notice to the Centre and Election Commission on a plea seeking to restrain convicted persons from forming political parties and hold positions till the time they are disqualified under the election law. At present, a politician is disqualified immediately from contesting elections for six years if he/she is sentenced to a jail term of two years or more.
A bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, while asking whether the court could stop a person from propagating his political views, agreed to examine the constitutional validity of section 29A of the 1951 Representation of the People Act (RPA).
Under Section 29A, registration of associations and bodies as political parties with the poll panel are dealt.
“Why is the Election Commission clothed with the power to merely register a political party, but not to de-register it,” the bench asked it while slating the hearing after six weeks.
According to the data by the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR) in 2014, criminal cases were pending against 1,581 legislators.
The court’s response came on a plea filed by state BJP leader and spokesperson Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay. Senior advocate Siddharth Luthra, appearing for Upadhyay, told the bench, “If a person on conviction in a criminal case was barred from contesting elections, it would be incongruent to allow such person to form or head a political party.”
Naming several top political leaders who have been convicted or have charges framed against them and were holding the highest political posts and wielding political power.
The petition said currently, even a person who has been convicted for crimes like murder, rape, smuggling, money laundering, loot, sedition, or dacoity, can form a party and become its president or office bearers.
The plea has also sought a direction to the ECI to frame guidelines to decriminalise the electoral system and ensure inner party democracy, as proposed by the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution (NCRWC).
Last month, the apex court had asked Centre to formulate a scheme for setting up special courts for trying criminal cases involving political persons . The aim of creating these special courts is to ensure that the politicians with criminal backgrounds were not able to delay trials and those facing false cases will also get justice.