NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday issued notice to the Union government on a PIL, challenging the constitutional validity of Section 11 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951
The provision granted power to the Election Commission to remove or reduce the period of disqualification of a legislator.
The plea before the court also questioned validity of the provisions which limited the period of disqualification to six year after conviction, saying the matter was of great national interest relating to restoration and maintenance of purity of our legislatures.
As retired IAS officer S N Shukla, appearing on behalf of his NGO 'Lok Prahari' challenged the validity of the provisions, a bench of Chief Justice U U Lalit and Justice Bela M Trivedi asked him, "What is so bad about Section 11? Parliament itself felt that power could be delegated to the Election Commission."
Shukla, for his part, submitted that the provision should either be struck down or read down as it suffered from the vice of "excessive delegation".
On this, the court decided to examine the matter and sought a response from the Centre and others.
It put the matter for consideration on December 5.
The writ petition also challenged the constitutional validity of Sections 8 (1), (2) and (3) and 9 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, in so far as these limited the period of disqualification/further disqualification to only six years from the date of conviction/ release of the convicted legislator in case of Section 8 and five years from the date of dismissal in case of Section 9, as being violative of Articles 14, and 102(1)/191(1) of the Constitution.
The petitioner also pointed out an earlier plea filed in 2018 was not entertained by the court at the threshold under the "wrong impression" that the issues raised were being examined by this court in another writ petition No. 699 of 2016 by Advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay.
"Since the earlier writ petition was dismissed neither on merits nor even on maintainability, this revised petition incorporating subsequent additional developments, facts and documents and consequent modification of the prayer in the earlier writ petition is not barred in the special circumstances of this matter of great national interest relating to restoration and maintenance of purity of our legislatures," the plea stated.
