Election Commission against same candidate contesting from two seats
The Supreme Court of India (Express Photo/Premnath Pandey) The Supreme Court of India (Express Photo/Premnath Pandey)
The Election Commission on Monday told the Supreme Court that it favoured amendments to the Representation of the People Act to prevent candidates from contesting from two seats simultaneously.
The commission told the bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, which was hearing a PIL by advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, that it had made recommendations on these lines in the past, which had also been accepted by the Law Commission, but nothing had been done on it so far.
The court directed that copies of the petition be served on the Election Commission and the Attorney-General so that they could assist the bench.
The petition challenged Section 33(7) of the Representation of the People Act, which allows a candidate to fight from two seats at the same time. “‘One person, one vote’ and ‘one candidate, one constituency’ is the dictum of a democracy. However, as per the law, as it stands today, a person can contest elections for the same office from two constituencies simultaneously,” the petition said.
The petitioner requested the court to “direct the Centre and the Election Commission to take appropriate steps to restrict” this.
Referring to Section 70 of the Act, which specifies that a person who wins on both seats can hold one seat only, the petitioner said: “The right to know is the fundamental right of every citizen under the Article 19 of the Constitution of India. Citizens cast their vote after knowing the candidate’s character, qualification and criminal records etc.”
“When a candidate contests from two seats, it is imperative that he has to vacate one of the two seats, if he wins both. This, apart from the consequent unavoidable financial burden on the public exchequer, government manpower and other resources for holding a by-election against the resultant vacancy is also an injustice to the voters of the constituency which the candidate is quitting from,” he said.
Upadhyay said that in 2004, the CEC had urged the Centre for amend the Act to provide that a person cannot contest from more than one constituency for the same office simultaneously.
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