Petition in SC complains about lack of publicity of Bihar poll candidates’ criminal past

A contempt petition has been filed within the Supreme Court (SC) in opposition to the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) and outstanding political events within the fray within the Bihar meeting elections, which concluded on November 7, for allegedly flouting the necessary path of the apex court docket to broadly publicise prison antecedents of candidates, who had contested the polls.

Brajesh Singh, a Nalanda-based lawyer, moved the SC, in search of that contempt proceedings be initiated in opposition to 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 Janta Party (LJP), Randeep Singh Surjewala of Indian National Congress (INC) and BL Santhosh of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The petition has accused these political events of not complying with the path to offer publicity of prison antecedents of candidates in broadly circulated newspapers, social media platforms, and their respective web sites.

The SC had given this path on February 13 whereas deciding on a contempt petition urging political events to adjust to the legislation laid down by a five-judge structure bench in September 2018, which had ordered candidates to mandatorily disclose their prison instances earlier than polls.

In February, the apex court docket had directed what the shape and content material of such disclosure ought to be. It even required political events to offer compelling causes for choosing such individuals with prison antecedents.

The contempt petition acknowledged that the majority political events revealed particulars of prison instances in opposition to their candidates in much less circulated newspapers as an alternative of main dailies in Bihar.

According to the petition, this amounted to contempt of the court docket orders, which required publicity to be finished via broadly circulated newspapers and that, too, a minimum of 3 times after submitting of nomination papers of a tainted candidate.

The petition identified that “political parties mainly published the criminal antecedents of their candidates on their websites and in some less circulated based newspapers and some in a limited manner on social media but nobody got it published in any national newspapers as directed by the apex court”.

The petition additional acknowledged that some political events fielded candidates with dozens of prison instances in opposition to them, together with critical offences. Such brazen violation of the SC path was cocking a snook on the apex court docket’s order, which had sought to create checks and balances whereas nominating a candidate.

A survey, which was carried out by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), a non-partisan, non-governmental organisation (NGO) that works within the space of electoral and political reforms, has revealed that of the 241 elected candidates within the 243-member newly constituted Bihar Assembly, 163 have pending prison instances pending in opposition to them.

The determine interprets to 68% of the elected lawmakers are tainted. Of this 68%, over 50% or 123 legislators have critical prison instances pending in opposition to them similar to homicide, try to homicide, kidnapping, and crimes in opposition to ladies. In the earlier Bihar legislative meeting, 142 lawmakers have been tainted.