On February 13, in a short four-page order, the Supreme Court asked political parties to explain why they choose candidates with criminal a...
On February 13, in a short four-page order, the Supreme Court asked political parties to explain why they choose candidates with criminal antecedents over those without a record.
The verdict was passed in a contempt case that emerged out of a 2019 ruling in Public Interest Foundation and Others. v. Union of India. In that judgement, the Supreme Court refused to accept a prayer that wanted persons with criminal backgrounds to be barred from contesting elections. The court said expanding disqualification provisions should be left to the Parliament and the court cannot enter the domain of legislation.
However, the court did issue a slew of guidelines making it mandatory for political parties to give wide publicity to the criminal cases faced by their candidates. The contempt petition was filed alleging that these guidelines have not been followed properly.
In its judgement last week, a two-judge bench consisting of Justices RF Nariman and S Ravindra Bhat expanded these guidelines invoking the court’s powers to issue orders to do complete justice under Article 142 of the Constitution.
Additional guidelines
The court put in place six additional guidelines over and above those prescribed in the 2019 judgement. The most important of these is the direction to political parties to explain...
