New Delhi: Aiming to weed out criminals from politics, the Supreme Court on Wednesday told the Centre to come back with a plan next month to set up special courts for fast tracking trial of 1,581 lawmakers facing criminal cases since 2014.
The Election Commission joined the apex court’s mission by supporting a suggestion to impose lifetime ban on convicted politicians from contesting elections.
The court also decided to examine whether a lifetime ban would violate the right to equality under Article 14 of the Constitution, as such a disqualification has not been provided either in the Constitution or the Representation of People Act. A bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and Navin Sinha asked the Centre to indicate how much money it was willing to allocate for setting up fast-track courts for concluding the trials within a year. The bench noted that special courts should exclusively deal with cases of politicians.
Supreme Court seeks info on fresh cases from centre
Justice Gogoi said that this argument has arisen because convictions are not taking place. “In some cases it takes 20 years for a person to be convicted and by this time he serves four terms as a legislator,” he said.
Fixing the next hearing on December 13, the court sought details from the Centre on the stage the trial of 1,581 cases had reached.
Petitioner Ashwini Kumar Upadhyaya earlier told the apex court that 1,581 MPs and MLAs have criminal cases pending against them as per the affidavits filed during the 2014 parliamentary and Assembly elections.
The bench also wanted to know from the Centre the number of criminal cases registered afresh against politicians.
Senior counsel Meenakshi Arora, appearing for the EC, said the Commission supported the petitioner to the extent that there should be de-criminalisation of politics. She also favoured special courts to fast track pending criminal cases.
A ban for a lifetime, as sought by the petitioner, could spell doom for politicians such as Lalu Prasad Yadav of the Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar or AIADMK’s V.K. Sasikala in Tamil Nadu.
The existing law disqualifies politicians sentenced to a jail term of two years or more from contesting elections for six years from the date of release from prison.
