Candidates Should Not Be Allowed To Contest From More The One Seat : Plea In Supreme Court Challenges RP Act Provisions

To be precise, the petition seeks relief in the nature of repeal of the said provisions which promote the situation wherein a person files nomination papers from two constituencies, manages to win from both the constituencies and thereafter, as required in law, vacates one seat, paving way for a fresh round of by-election, draining the public exchequer further.

Senior Advocate, Mr. Chander Uday Singh informed the Bench comprising Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and M.M. Sundresh, that a petition challenging Section 33(7) has already been admitted and is pending before the Apex Court. He asserted that the matter was considered to be of such importance that the Attorney General was asked to assist the Court. Mr. Singh added that apart from Section 33 the present petition also challenges the constitutionality of Section 70 of the Act.

The Bench issued notice to the concerned authorities, returnable in four weeks.

The petition submits that once one of the seats is vacated, the resources that go on to fill it up is enormous. It requires the involvement of the Election Commission, Chief Electoral Officer of the State, District Election Officer, Electoral Registration Officers, Returning Officers at constituency level, officials from Central and State Governments. To conduct the 2009 General Election almost 5 million officials were deployed. According to the Ministry of Law, Justice and Company Affairs, Government of India, the official expenditure to conduct elections increases every successive General Election. In order to demonstrate the same, the petition notes that the estimated cost for conducting the General Election in 2004 (INR 1300 Crores) was 125 times that of 1952 elections (without adjusting for inflation). It added, as per a study conducted by the Centre for Media Studies the estimated cost for conducting 2009 General Election was INR 10,000 Crores.

The petition also submits that in the Background Paper on Electoral Reforms prepared by the Core-Committee on Electoral Reforms, which was released in 2010, suggested restricting the number of seats from which a person can contest in a particular election. Furthermore, the Election Commission, the petition asserts, also proposed that if a person contests from two seats, then they should bear the entire-cost of the by-election for the seat that they had vacated. Lamenting that the said recommendations have not been incorporated by the Government till date and the burden to finance the by-election is still on the tax-payer, the petition implores the Court to direct implementation at the earliest.

The petition also seeks indulgence of the Apex Court to settle the law regarding when a by-election can be conducted. It proposes that apart from death or serious ailments of candidates, allowing by-elections for any other purposes would not be fair. It further argues -

"The political parties should not be allowed to fight their internal disputes at the cost of the general public and public funds by forcing by-elections. An elected representative shall not be entitled to resign from the post prematurely other, than on the ground of physical illness, without depositing the entire cost of the election to which he has declared as elected, in case he fails to deposit the cost of election the same should be recovered by the Election Commission just like the dues of land revenue."

The candidates on whom the burden of paying the cost as elucidated above ought to be imposed has also been proposed by the petition, as under -

1. Incumbent MLA contest for Lok Sabha, and on election vacates the assembly seat and vice versa;
2. A candidate may contest for both assembly and Lok Sabha when elections are held simultaneously; and
3. An elected member vacates a seat and seeks re-election in the ensuing bye-election to establish his hold over the electorate, or to change party affiliation.

The petition was filed by Advocate-on-Record, Ms. Usha Nandini V.

[Case Title: Koshy Jacob v. Union of India And Anr. WP(C) No. 421 of 2022]