Supreme Court notice on PIL seeking ban on convicted from contesting polls

The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice to the Election Commission and the Union government on a PIL for electoral reform, seeking lifetime ban on convicted persons from contesting elections, forming political party and becoming party office-bearers.

A bench of Chief Justice H.L. Dattu and Justice Amitav Roy issued the notice on the petition filed by Ashwini Upadhyay, BJP spokesperson, who also prayed for a direction to frame code of conduct for de-criminalisation, de-communalisation, eradication of corruption, casteism and communalism in politics. The bench directed the PIL to be tagged and heard along with a similar PIL pending adjudication.

The petitioner said, presently, there is no lifetime ban against public servants if convicted by court, but only six years ban on contesting elections against people representatives. He said urgent measures required for redressal within the political system are de-criminalisation and de-communalisation of politics.

He said, corruption and de-criminalisation of politics has been an area of concern since last two decades, regarding which many recommendations have come from various high-powered committees, constituted to advise the government on the issue of electoral and political party reforms, but nothing has been done so far to address these issues.

He pointed out that the Law Commission and Election Commission had suggested debarring of candidates from contesting the election, if a competent court in respect to offences, punishable by imprisonment of five years or more, have framed charges against contesting candidate and second, disqualification for filing false affidavit.

It is impossible to achieve golden goals set out in the preamble of our Constitution without de-criminalisation and de-communalisation of politics. These issues besides being a bottleneck, goes on to hinder and stifle the life out of any developmental agenda being undertaken and the evils sponsored through this becomes omnipotent and tarnishes the very foundation of democracy system, he added and sought the court’s intervention.