Supreme Court reserves verdict on plea about 2020 Bihar Assembly elections

The petition accused these political parties of not complying with a direction issued last year on February 13 by the apex court to publicise details of criminal antecedents of candidates in widely circulated newspapers, social media platforms, and their respective websites.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday reserved its verdict on a contempt petition filed against the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) and prominent political parties who were in the fray in Bihar legislative assembly polls last year, for failing to declare and publicise criminal antecedents of their electoral candidates. "We reserve the order," the top court bench headed by Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman said.

“Our orders have to be followed with," a bench of the Supreme Court, headed by Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman and also comprising Justice B R Gavai said. (HT_PRINT)

The plea was filed by Brajesh Singh, a Nalanda-based lawyer, who sought initiation of contempt proceedings against CEC Sunil Arora, Bihar’s Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) HR Srinivas, KC Tyagi of the ruling Janata Dal (United), Jagdanand Singh of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Abdul Khalik of the Loktantrik Janata Party (LJP), Randeep Singh Surjewala of Indian National Congress (INC) and BL Santhosh of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The petition accused these political parties of not complying with a direction issued last year on February 13 by the apex court to publicise details of criminal antecedents of candidates in widely circulated newspapers, social media platforms, and their respective websites. “Our orders have to be followed with," a bench of the Supreme Court, headed by Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman and also comprising Justice B R Gavai said.

Singh’s contempt petition stated that most political parties published details of criminal cases against their candidates in newspapers with low circulation instead of leading dailies in Bihar. Alleging that this amounted to contempt of the court orders, which required publicity to be done through widely circulated newspapers.

Congress, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and CPI(M), tendered an "unconditional apology" during the course of the hearing today for failing to follow through.