Plea in Supreme Court to bar poll fight from 2 seats

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to examine an important issue as to whether a candidate can be barred from contesting in two Assembly/Parliamentary constituencies during elections.

A three-judge Bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A.M. Kanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud was hearing a PIL filed by BJP spokesperson and advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyaya seeking a ban to this effect. Attorney General K.K. Venugopal that he would assist the court in deciding this important question of law and file a counter affidavit. The Bench agreed and granted time for filing reply.

The petitioner said One Person One Vote and One Candidate One Constituency is the dictum of democracy. However, as per the law, as it stands today, a person can contest the election for the same office from two constituencies simultaneously.

Section 33(7) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, allows a person to contest a general election or a group of byeelections or biennial elections from two constituencies, whereas Section 70 of the RPA, specifies that if a person is elected to more than one seat in either House of the Parliament or in either House of the State Legislature, then he/she can only hold on to one of the seats that he/she won in the election.

He said when a candidate contests from two seats, it is imperative that he/she has to vacate one of the two seats if he/she wins both. This, apart from the consequent unavoidable financial burden on the public exchequer, government manpower and other resources for holding bypolls against the resultant vacancy is also an injustice to the voters of the constituency, which the candidate is quitting from where he/she was elected.

In its response, the Election Commission said that it favoured the proposal to bar a candidate from contesting in two assembly/parliamentary constituencies during elections.