SC refuses to restrain jailed netas from contesting polls

Legal Correspondent

New Delhi, December 5

The Supreme Court today dismissed an appeal against the Delhi High Court verdict upholding the constitutional validity of the newly-amended law allowing jailed candidates to contest elections. The HC had noted that keeping the poll arena out-of-bounds for such persons would lead to “vendetta politics” by ruling parties.

A Bench comprising Chief Justice HL Dattu and Justice AK Sikri passed the order on the appeal by advocate ML Sharma. “Our system permits even thugs to participate in the elections as long as they are not convicted” and there was nothing wrong in the HC verdict,” it said.

Sharma had come to the SC, challenging the HC’s February 6 judgment. “All that a politician or a ruling party would need to do to prevent rivals from contesting an election is to ask the police to file a case and arrest them,” a Bench comprising Chief Justice NV Ramana and Justice Manmohan pointed out while dismissing a PIL challenging the validity of the law.

The HC ruled that the petitioner’s plea to “bar any person who is in jail or in police custody from contesting an election on the ground that it would lead to criminalisation of politics is a case of the remedy being worse than the disease.

“Extending curtailment of the right to vote of a person in prison to the right to stand in election would, in our opinion, leave the door open for practice of vendetta politics by ruling parties.”