SC to hear plea on Mar 18 to bar poll candidates with serious offences

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear on March 18 a plea seeking to debar from polls, candidates charged with serious offences.

A bench of Justices Surya Kant and N Kotiswar Singh would likely hear the matter.

The apex court in September 2022 sought responses from the Centre and the Election Commission of India (ECI) on the plea filed by advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay.

Aside from seeking to debar persons against whom charges were framed in criminal cases, the plea also sought directions to the Centre and the ECI to restrain such candidates put on trial for serious offences.

The plea, filed through advocate Ashwani Kumar Dubey, alleged that despite recommendations of the Law Commission of India and court's previous directions, the Centre and the ECI did not act.

The plea said of the 539 winners of the 2019 Lok Sabha election, about 233 or 43 per cent, declared facing criminal cases.

Referring to data from a report of NGO Association for Democratic Reforms, the petition said there was a 109 per cent increase in the number of MPs with declared serious criminal cases since 2009, with one MP declaring 204 criminal cases against him, including culpable homicide, house trespass, robbery, criminal intimidation, etc.

The plea claimed the political parties were competing with each other in a race to the bottom as they couldn't afford to leave their competitors free to recruit persons with criminal antecedents.

The injury caused to the people was large owing to the criminalisation of politics and parties were still setting up candidates with serious criminal antecedents, it added.