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Judiciary can't ban lawmakers for life: Supreme Court
CJI Chandrachud emphasised that imposition of a restriction on legislators is a matter of legislative policy.
Courts cannot debar convicted lawmakers from contesting polls for life when the legislature limits the prohibition to six years, the Supreme Court observed on Tuesday, expressing its indisposition to entertain a plea demanding life bans in such cases.
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A bench, headed by Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud, emphasised that imposition of a restriction on legislators is a matter of legislative policy. “It’s a matter of legislative policy after all. How can we say life ban when the legislature says six years?” the bench, also comprising justice PS Narasimha, asked petitioner and advocate Ashwini Upadhyay.
Responding, Upadhyay said that he has also challenged the pertinent provision in the Representation of the People Act, 1951, which provides that a legislator sentenced to a jail term of not less than two years shall remain disqualified from the date of such conviction and shall continue to be disqualified for a further period of six years since his release.
But the bench retorted: “We can strike down the provision if we agree with you and find it unconstitutional, but we cannot say that there should be a life ban. That’s not for the courts to do.”
Even as it adjourned the matter for a detailed hearing after four weeks, the bench told Upadhyay that courts cannot specify a period of disqualification for convicted lawmakers and that its remit is confined to scrutinising the validity of a provision under challenge.
Upadhyay, in a pending public interest litigation (PIL) filed by him in 2016, sought debarment of convicted lawmakers for life. Through a subsequent application, he further challenged the validity of various provisions of the RP Act limiting the disqualification to six years. The petitioner-lawyer questioned the different standards of punishment for convicted lawmakers on one hand and convicted public servants on the other and demanded that the same rule of debarment must be applied to MLAs/MPs on contesting elections or for heading a political party.
Opposing Upadhyay’s petition, the Union government filed its affidavit in December 2020. Making a distinction between bureaucrats and members of Parliament or legislatures, the affidavit said that public servants are governed by “service conditions” whereas no such conditions exist for lawmakers. “Instead, they are governed by the RP Act where a six-year disqualification from contesting polls is prescribed on conviction for an offence prescribed under the Act and where the sentence is two years and above” it said.
The affidavit further cited a 2019 Supreme Court judgment in Public Interest Foundation Vs Union of India, in which the court observed: “Though criminalisation in politics is a bitter manifest truth, which is a termite to the citadel of democracy, the court cannot make the law.” In view of this decided case, the Centre urged the court to dismiss the application.
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Filing an affidavit in March 2017, the Election Commission of India (ECI) had said that Upadhyay’s plea is “not adversarial” in seeking directives for ensuring that trials of MPs and MLAs are concluded within a year and that such convicts are prohibited for life from the political process. “…the answering respondent (ECI) supports the cause espoused by the petitioner,” the affidavit said.
