Poll bar for serious offence: Top court sends notices to Centre, EC on PIL

The Supreme Court Wednesday sought responses from the Centre and also the committee on a plea to debar persons against whom charges are framed in serious offences from contesting elections.

A bench of Justices K M Joseph and Hrishikesh Roy issued notices to the Ministry of Law and Justice, Ministry of Home Affairs, and therefore the poll panel.

The top court was hearing a plea filed by lawyer Ashwini Upadhyay on the problem.

Besides debarring persons against whom charges are framed in criminal cases, the plea, filed through advocate Ashwani Kumar Dubey, has also sought direction to the Centre and also the commission of India (ECI) to require steps to restrain such candidates who are placed on trial for serious offences.

The PIL claimed that despite recommendations of the Law Commission and therefore the court's earlier directions, the Centre and therefore the ECI haven't taken steps during this regard.

The plea said that out of 539 winners of the Lok Sabha election in 2019, as many as 233 (43%) declared criminal cases against themselves.

Highlighting the statistics from the report of NGO -- Association for Democratic Reforms -- the petition said there was a rise of 109 per cent within the number of MPs with declared serious criminal cases since 2009, with one MP declaring 204 criminal cases against himself including cases associated with committing culpable homicide, house trespass, robbery, criminal intimidation, etc.

"What is alarming is that the proportion of candidates with criminal antecedents and their chances of winning have actually increased rapidly over the years," the petition said.

Criminals who earlier wont to help politicians win elections within the hope of getting favours, appear to own cut out the middle-man in favour of entering politics themselves.

"Political parties, in turn, became steadily more reliant on criminals as candidates 'self-finance' their own elections in an era, where election contests became phenomenally expensive, but also because candidates with criminal antecedents are more likely to win than clean candidates, it alleged.

It further alleged that political parties are competing with one another during a race to the underside because they can't afford to go away their competitors liberated to recruit criminals.

The injury caused to people is large because the criminalisation of politics is at an extreme level and political parties are still fixing candidates with serious criminal antecedents. Therefore, voters find it difficult to cast their vote freely and fairly though it's their fundamental right, guaranteed under Article 19, it said