The Supreme Court on Friday asked the Election Commission to respond whether its decision of 2013 disqualifying convicted MlAs and MPs was being circumvented by legislators after a PIl gave instances to suggest so.
A bench of Chief Justice TS Thakur, Justices FM Ibrahim Kalifulla and AM Khanwilkar issued notice to the poll panel on a PIl filed by NGO lok Prahari. The NGO’s founder SN Shukla sought a direction from the Court to ensure that the Election Commission should be supplied with a copy of the order passed by the trial court that any convicted MP or MlA, who was sentenced to an imprisionment of two years or more, will attract disqualification under the provisions of Representation of Peoples Act, 1951.
Shukla submitted that the Supreme Court in July 2013 had struck down the immunity available to a convicted MlA/MP to remain in office by filling an appeal challenging his conviction order. With this protection gone, any conviction in an offence punishable beyond two years will automatically attract disqualification. However, this was not the ground reality citing instance of UP MlA Kailash Nath Chaurasiya.
This legislator managed to remain as a legislator despite incurring disqualification after he was sentenced to three years imprisonment by a trial court in UP last year. The UP Assembly failed to issue his disqualification order and in the meantime, Chaurasia obtained a stay on his sentence from the District Judge, the petition pointed out.
This is not the lone case. When Shukla approached EC to remedy this loophole, even the poll panel was helpless. The Commission received information of two cases from Maharashtra where the convicted MlAs, despit suffering disqualification of membership, continued to remain on the post after an opinion was given by the state Advocate General who proposed that disqualification will be effective only after the Governor issued an order of disqualification.