HC directive sought to enforce CEC order

By Our Staff Reporter

CHENNAI, APRIL 16. A public interest litigation petition seeking to ``direct the Returning Officers to strictly comply with the Chief Election Commissioner's 1997 order regarding the disqualification of a candidate'', has been filed before the Madras High Court.

The 1997 order states that persons convicted of criminal offence ``even if their appeal is pending with stay'' should not be permitted to contest elections.

After hearing senior advocate, Mr. K. M. Vijayan, who filed the petition on behalf of the VOICE (Consumer Care Council), the First Bench comprising the Chief Justice, Mr. Justice N.K. Jain, and Mr. Justice K. Sampath, adjourned the matter to April 20.

The petition wanted the court to ``declare that the disqualification under Section 8 (1) to (3) of the Representation of People Act cannot be stayed against the object of the Act, and should be implemented to promote probity in public life and prevent the criminalisation of politics, irrespective of any pendency of appeal or suspension of sentence or stay of conviction under the relevant provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code (Cr.P.C)''.

The Section makes it clear that neither the pendency of appeal nor the stay of sentence or conviction can come in the way of enforcing the provisions enacted in order to preserve probity in public life, it added.

Citing a Supreme Court observation in 1995 that ``merely because sentence is suspended or the accused is released on bail, the conviction does not cease to be operative'', the petition said since the ``legally untrained mind like that of a Returning Officer'' could not be expected to understand this legal position, the court ``should state things in clear terms, removing the doubts created by the Single Judge of this court''.

The Returning Officer has no jurisdiction to act as a quasi- judicial authority in deciding the merits of the candidates disqualified under Section 8, the petition contended.

Placing all these points in the court, the petitioner wanted an interim injunction restraining the Returning Officers from accepting ``any nomination from any candidate, who is convicted and disqualified under any one of the provisions of Section 8 (1) to 8 (3)'' in the coming Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu.

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Section  : Southern States
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