The Hindu : Front Page : Larger Bench to decide Kuldip Nayar's plea

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jul 13, 2004

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Front Page

Larger Bench to decide Kuldip Nayar's plea

By Our Legal Correspondent

NEW DELHI, JULY 12 . The Supreme Court today directed that the writ petitions filed by the former Rajya Sabha MP, Kuldip Nayar and Inder Jit, another former MP, challenging amendments made to the Representation of the People Act, dispensing with the domicile requirement and introducing open ballot system, be listed before the Chief Justice of India for posting before a larger Bench.

A Bench, headed by Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, permitted the Election Commission last month to hold elections to the Rajya Sabha for filling 65 vacancies from 14 States across the country.

The court, however, made it clear that the election of candidates who contested from the States to which they did not belong would be subject to its final orders on the writ petitions.

Today, a Bench of Justice Balakrishnan and Justice A.R. Lakshmanan referred the petitions to the Chief Justice for posting before a larger Bench in view of the important questions of law involved in this issue.

According to Mr. Nayar, federalism was a part of the "basic structure" of the Constitution and the amendment to the RP Act made in August 2003 being contrary to the basic structure was unconstitutional and liable to be struck down.

He said Article 84 (c) of the Constitution dealt with qualification for membership of Parliament either prescribed therein or under any law made by Parliament.

Accordingly, under the Representation of the People Act, a candidate for being elected to the Council of States should be ordinarily a resident of the State concerned, he said.

However, this requirement had been done away with in the amended Act and by this Parliament had sought to change the basic structure of the Constitution.

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