Lawmakers shouldn’t seek adjournments to delay poll pleas: SC

The Apex Court also suggested that courts should dispose of poll petitions promptly, within six months. “The fundamental purpose for expeditious disposal of an election petition is to sustain the purity of parliamentary democracy...A voter casts his vote as a responsible citizen to choose the masters for governing the country,” said a Bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra.

It added: “That being the trust of the electorate in an elected candidate, when he faces an assail to his election, it should be his sanguine effort to become free from the assail in the election petition and work with attainment and not take shelter seeking adjournments with the elated hope that he can be triumphant in the contest by passage of time.” 

It added a lawmaker, facing <g data-gr-id="25">challenge</g> to his election, should make <g data-gr-id="26">genuine</g> effort to free himself from election petitions. The observations came during <g data-gr-id="24">hearing</g> of an appeal filed by Manipur resident Pukhrem Sharatchandra Singh, who had moved the Apex Court challenging the election of one Mairembam Prithviraj for the Manipur Legislative Assembly in 2012.

Singh had challenged the election of the MLA on the grounds that Prithviraj had filed false affidavits, claiming that he had an MBA degree from Mysore University. Singh filed the petition in the Manipur high court, but the matter kept adjourning from time to time.

The Apex Court observed that poll petitions have to be decided with “promptitude” as there is an obligation cast upon the court to dispose of the same within a period of six months and added that the attitude of delay “has to be curbed from all angles because law does not countenance it”.