SC rejects Sanjay Dutt's plea to contest LS polls

Dutt was held guilty of serious offences under the Arms Act.

The Supreme Court today dismissed the application of Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt seeking permission to contest the Lucknow Lok Sabha seat on a Samajwadi Party ticket in the coming elections.

The game is now open: Lalji Tandon will contest the seat from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), replacing former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who had held it earlier and for whom Tandon was the campaign manager. Akhilesh Das, former Mayor of Lucknow, will contest it as a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate. Das was a Congress leader and a Union minister until he was dropped from the council of ministers in 2008 and moved to the BSP.

Though he is a popular actor and was not a habitual criminal, this was not a fit case to stay the conviction under the Arms Act in connection with the 1993 Mumbai blasts, the order passed by a three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice KG Balakrishnan said. The power to stay convictions should be exercised rarely, the order added.

The court explained that the conviction of Dutt, was guilty of serious offences under the Arms Act after he was judged by a special TADA court.

Dutt now stands disqualified from contesting the elections under Section 8 (3) of the Representation of People Act, which debars a person sentenced to two or more years of imprisonment, from standing for elections.

The order clarified that the case of Dutt stood on a different footing than that of former cricketer and BJP Lok Sabha MP, Navjot Singh Sidhu. The latter, whose conviction and sentence in a road rage case was stayed by the Supreme Court to enable him to contest the Amritsar by-elections in 2007, was earlier acquitted by the trial court. Other cases cited by Dutt’s counsel were also distinguished on facts.

Meanwhile, the Congress today said it would field a candidate from the Lucknow parliamentary constituency. Earlier, the party had decided not to field anyone from the seat out of respect for Sanjay Dutt and his late father Sunil Dutt, who was a prominent Congress leader.