The Wire: New Delhi: Tuesday, July 04, 2017.
The Supreme
Court had in 2002 made the filing of affidavits declaring assets and criminal
records mandatory in Lok Sabha and assembly polls, but the Election Commission
had rejected a similar demand for affidavits in the 2012 elections.
The question
as to why no affidavit is required to be filed by candidates in a presidential
election stating their assets, liabilities/dues towards banks/public
authorities, details of pending (criminal) cases, if any, and educational
qualifications has once again been asked even as just two candidates, Ram Nath
Kovind and Meira Kumar, remain in the fray.
The query was
filed by lawyer-activist Hemant Kumar under the Right to Information Act with
both the presidential secretariat and the secretary general of the Lok Sabha,
who is the returning officer, for the election this year. Even though the
process of filing of nominations ended about a week ago, no reply has been
received so far. While the presidential secretariat has transferred the plea to
the Election Commission, the secretary general has not provided any reply.
The question,
according to the petitioner, assumes significance because the filing of such
affidavits is “now mandated for every public election in the country, be it of
panchayati raj institutions, municipal bodies, state legislatures or the
parliament.”
Kumar said
the filing of affidavits declaring assets, educational qualifications and
criminal record, if any, was made compulsory by the Supreme Court through its
judgement in 2002.
This year,
over 100 nomination papers were filed by candidates for the presidential
election, but all barring Kovind and Kumar, were rejected as they could not
arrange the signatures of 50 proposers and an equal number of seconders from
among the elected MPs or MLAs in their nomination forms. But none were required
to submit affidavits along with their nomination papers forcing Kumar to file a
petition.
Kumar has
also questioned why submission of such affidavits had not been prescribed or
mandated in the presidential election either via enactment of an appropriate
amendment by the parliament in The Presidential and Vice-Presidential Elections
Act, 1952 or by Central Government in the 1974 Rules as framed under this Act.
“Even the
Election Commission of India (ECI) has not issued any directions for the
submission of the same by exercising its plenary powers for reasons best known
to it,” said Kumar, adding that as a member of the legal fraternity and a
citizen of India, he wants to know what has prevented the appropriate election
authorities responsible for conducting presidential election in India from
making submission of such affidavits mandatory.
Incidentally,
the issue had also been raised by the Association for Democratic Rights (ADR)
during the 2012 presidential election. However, the Election Commission had
rejected the demand for making the filing of affidavits by candidates
mandatory. “We cannot ask the candidates contesting the election of the
President of India to file the affidavits,” the commission had said in a brief
reply to ADR’s letter to the chief election commissioner.
ADR, which
has been working on electoral and political reforms, had contended that since
the Supreme Court judgments of 2002 and 2003 had directed the ECI to get
background information on criminal records, assets, liabilities and education,
through a declaration from all candidates contesting parliament or assembly
elections in exercise of its powers under Article 324 of the constitution, the
same logic should be applied in the presidential polls.
The ADR had
also cited Article 79 of the constitution in support of its claim stating it
lays down that the parliament for the Union shall consist of the president and two
houses to be known respectively as the Council of States and the House of the
People, and that those contesting the election for the top post be treated at
par with those contesting the parliament elections.
Though the
demand had then found support in two former Chief Election Commissioners (CEC),
T.S. Krishnamurthy and N. Gopalaswami, who had also written to the then CEC
V.S. Sampath seeking that the requirement of affidavits be extended to the
presidential polls, the Election Commission had not acceded to it.
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