SC fines 8 political parties for ‘hiding’ criminal records of candidates
The Supreme Court on Tuesday (August 10) imposed fines on eight political parties including the BJP and the Congress for hiding the criminal antecedents of candidates fielded by them during the Bihar assembly elections last year.
The court imposed the fine while hearing a contempt petition alleging the flouting of its earlier order pertaining to the Bihar assembly elections in October-November.
While the NCP and CPI(M) were fined ₹5 lakh each, the BJP, Congress, Janata Dal, RJD(United), CPI and Lok Janshakti Party were asked to pay a penalty of ₹1 lakh each, LiveLaw reported.
Commenting that political parties refuse to “wake up from deep slumber”, a bench of Justices RF Nariman and BR Gavi said the outfits have committed contempt of court by disobeying its February 2020 directive where the top court had asked parties to publish the criminal records of its candidates.
The apex court said the NCP and CPI(M) were fully non-compliant as they failed to submit Form C7 or C8 for any of their candidates.
The court asked political parties to publish criminal details of their candidates within 48 hours of their selection for future elections.
“Political lawmakers will wake up soon and carry out major surgery for weeding out the malignancy of criminalisation of politics,” the two-judge bench observed on Tuesday.
Stating that the “appeals” of the top court have “fallen on deaf ears”, the bench said, “Though we want to do something urgently, our hands are tied, we can’t encroach the domain of legislature.”
The top court also instructed political parties to display the said information on their websites during future elections and directed the Election Commission to create a mobile app that has information about candidates for voters’ perusal.
The bench also said that criminal cases against sitting MPs and MLAs cannot be withdrawn without the prior permission of high courts.
In an order on February last year, the apex court had mandated that all political parties will be required to make public the criminal antecedents of their candidates within 48 hours of his or her selection or at least two weeks before the first date of filing of nomination papers.
