Unimplemented poll promises does not amount to cheating: Supreme Court
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday clarified that unimplemented poll promises made by political parties in their manifestos will not amount to cheating of the voters.
A Bench of Chief Justice H.L. Dattu and Justice Amitav Roy rejected a PIL filed by advocate Mithilesh Kumar Pandey seeking enforcement of promises in election manifestos. He said that political parties are cheating the voters by making false promises in their manifestos and are not implementing them, and wanted the court to issue a direction to the Election Commission to enforce them.
He referred a 2013 judgment of the apex court, which said, “freebies shake the root of free and fair elections to a large degree. Considering that there is no enactment that directly governs the contents of the election manifesto, the Election Commission should frame guidelines for the same in consultation with all the recognised political parties.”
The petitioner said pursuant to this judgment the EC had framed guidelines but is not implementing them. He also sought the court to prevent post poll alliances of political parties, saying “if we know that the alliance will break or a party will join another alliance after the poll, people will not vote for that alliance.”
The bench asked the counsel “Which law says that promise made by a political party is enforceable in law? Only if it is enforceable it becomes cheating.”
Regarding post poll alliances, the CJI observed “it is not for this court to say don’t join together after the polls. The political parties while fighting each other may say so many things during elections. But to prevent elections being again and again, three or four political parties may come together after the polls and form an alliance. Can we say that there should not be any post-poll alliance?
