Supreme Court Fines Parties Over Criminal Candidates [10.8.2021]

Records of criminal cases have to be made public by parties within 48 hours of the candidate's selection, the Supreme Court said in a big step to cleanse politics. 

New Delhi, 10.8.2021

Nine parties including the BJP and Congress were held guilty of contempt and eight fined today for not widely publicising the criminal records of their 2020 Bihar candidates. The parties "refuse to wake up from deep slumber", the Supreme Court said.

The Congress, BJP and five more parties were fined ? 1 lakh each and the CPM and Nationalist Congress Party were fined ? 5 lakh for not making public their candidates' criminal cases ahead of the Bihar election in November.

Records of criminal cases have to be made public by parties within 48 hours of the candidate's selection, the Supreme Court said in a big step to cleanse politics.

The court's verdict said 51 per cent of the winning candidates in Bihar have serious criminal cases against them like murder, kidnapping and rape. It did acknowledge the possibility of rivals implicating someone falsely as vendetta.

"Despite repeated appeals, political parties refuse to wake up from deep slumber," said the Supreme Court. "Political lawmakers will wake up soon and carry out major surgery for weeding out the malignancy of criminalisation of politics," the court noted in its order.

The Supreme Court's appeals had "fallen on deaf ears", said Justices RF Nariman and BR Gavi. "Though we want to do something urgently, our hands are tied, we can't encroach the domain of legislature," they remarked.

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10 Aug 2021