The court in its judgment in Brijesh Singh vs. Sunil Arora & Ors. [Writ Petition (Civil) No.536 of 2011] observed that no one can deny that the menace of criminalisation in the Indian political system is growing day by day. The court rightly mentions that it is undeniable that for maintaining purity of the political system, persons with criminal antecedents and who are involved in the criminalisation of the political system should not be permitted to be the lawmakers. The only question is, whether this Court can do so by issuing directions that do not have the foundation in the statutory provisions.
This Court, time and again, has appealed to the lawmakers of the country to rise to the occasion and take steps for bringing out necessary amendments so that the involvement of persons with criminal antecedents in the polity is prohibited. The court observed that all these appeals have fallen on the deaf ears. The political parties refuse to wake up from deep slumber. Even though the area is a grave concern, in view of the constitutional scheme of separation of powers, though we desire that something urgently requires to be done in the matter, the court observed that its hands are tied and that they cannot transgress into the area reserved for the legislative arm of the State.
The directions thus fall in form of only an appeal to the conscience of the lawmakers and hope that they will wake up soon and carry out a major surgery for weeding out the malignancy of criminalisation in politics.
Directions of the Court
In furtherance of the directions issued by the Constitution Bench in Court in Public Interest Foundation and Ors. v. Union of India and Anr. [(2019) 3 SCC 224] and our Order dated 13.02.2020, in order to make the right of information of a voter more effective and meaningful, we find it necessary to issue the following further directions:
(i) Political parties are to publish information regarding criminal antecedents of candidates on the homepage of their websites, thus making it easier for the voter to get to the information that has to be supplied. It will also become necessary now to have on the homepage a caption which states “candidates with criminal antecedents”;
(ii) The ECI is directed to create a dedicated mobile application containing information published by candidates regarding their criminal antecedents so that at one stroke, each voter gets such information on his/her mobile phone;
(iii) The ECI is directed to carry out an extensive awareness campaign to make every voter aware about his right to know and the availability of information regarding criminal antecedents of all contesting candidates. This shall be done across various platforms, including social media, websites, TV ads, prime time debates, pamphlets, etc. A fund must be created for this purpose within a period of 4 weeks into which fines for contempt of Court may be directed to be paid;
(iv) For the aforesaid purposes, the ECI is also directed to create a separate cell which will also monitor the required compliances so that this Court can be apprised promptly of non-compliance by any political party of the directions contained in this Court’s Orders, as fleshed out by the ECI, in instructions, letters and circulars issued in this behalf;
(v) We clarify that the direction in paragraph 4.4 of our Order dated 13.02.2020 be modified and it is clarified that the details which are required to be published, shall be published within 48 hours of the selection of the candidate and not prior to two weeks before the first date of filing of nominations; and
(vi) We reiterate that if such a political party fails to submit such compliance report with the ECI, the ECI shall bring such noncompliance by the political party to the notice of this Court as being in contempt of this Court’s Orders/directions, which shall in future be viewed very seriously.
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