Tamil Nadu's ruling DMK has filed a petition in the Supreme Court in the ongoing case about freebies, contending that the scope of a "freebie" is very wide and "there are a lot of aspects which need to be considered". The court is hearing a petition that has challenged the promise of freebies at election time, contending that this practice can bring financial ruin on a State. So far, Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party, has challenged the stance of the petition, which was filed by the BJP's Ashwini Upadhyay.
In its petition Chief Minister MK Stalin's DMK argued that only a welfare scheme introduced by a State Government cannot be judged to be classified as a freebie. "The ruling Government at the Union giving tax holidays to foreign companies, waiver of bad loans of influential industrialists, granting crucial contracts to favoured conglomerates etc. also have to be considered and cannot be left untouched," the petition read.
"This Hon'ble Court cannot have a restrictive approach for classifying any scheme or act by the Union/State Legislature to be a 'freebie' without considering the magnitude of resultant consequences and social welfare at both micro and macro level," the DMK contended.
Earlier, the AAP told the SC that targeting and regulating electoral speeches will amount to “nothing more than a wild-goose chase” if the concerns are over fiscal deficit due to the promises of freebies made during polls by political parties. The top court, which is mulling setting up an expert panel to brainstorm the issue of freebies announced during elections, was told by the AAP that the curb on electoral speeches, without legislative backing, would be violative of the fundamental right of freedom of speech and expression and the proposed committee may not “encompass the regulation, let alone prohibition, of certain types of electoral speech.”
“Such a restriction or prohibition, executively or judicially imposed, would amount to a curtailment of the freedom of speech guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a) without the backing of legislative sanction,” the party has said in its additional submissions.
“Further, if concerns over fiscal deficit and responsibility are indeed the point of the present proceedings (in the PIL), targeting and regulating electoral speech will amount to nothing more than a wild-goose chase,” it said.
The AAP said the electoral promises while serving an important democratic function, are completely inappropriate proxies for regulating actual fiscal outgo.