Our Correspondent / New Delhi
The Supreme Court today declined to disqualify candidates, against whom courts have taken cognisance of chargesheets, from contesting elections, but urged Parliament to enact a law to address the malaise of criminals entering legislatures.
The five-judge Constitution bench, headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, said that citizens have a right to be informed about the antecedents of their candidates and political parties are obligated to put all the information about their candidates on their websites.
The Chief Justice, while reading out the unanimous verdict on PIL seeking to disqualify candidates contesting polls after court frames charges against them, said Parliament must ensure that criminals must not come to politics.
The bench, also comprising Justices R F Nariman, A M Khanwilkar, D Y Chandrachud and Indu Malhotra, asked the legislature to consider framing a law to ensure decriminalisation of politics.
The Apex court said that informed choice is the corner stone of democracy and termed criminalisation of politics of the largest democracy as “unsettling”.
The court favoured wider publicity, through print and electronic media about the antecedents of candidates affiliated to political parties.
The apex court said it could not add any further disqualification to the law and it was now up to Parliament to make a law to prevent persons with serious criminal cases against them from entering the legislature.
The Chief Justice wished that such a law might come sooner than later before criminalisation of politics sounds the death knell for democracy. It is necessary to cure the cancer of criminalisation of politics.
The court directed that:
* Each contesting candidate must state in bold the criminal cases pending against him/her in the forms to be filed up at the time of filing nomination papers.
* The candidate aspiring to contest an election would be required to inform the political party about the criminal cases pending against him.
* Political parties should put up on their website the criminal antecedents of the candidates being fielded by them in the elections.
* Political parties and the candidate will give wide publicity to the criminal cases pending against the contesting candidate both in print and electronic media after filing their nomination papers.
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