Persons in police custody not entitled to contest Lok Sabha or Legislative Assembly elections, says Supreme Court

In another landmark ruling, the Supreme Court has, categorically laid down that persons in lawful custody of the police will not be entitled to contest elections to the Lok Sabha and the Legislative Assemblies of States. The verdict was delivered by a Division Bench of Justices AK Patnaik and SJ Mukhopadhaya in the case of Chief Election Commissioner Etc. v. Jan Chaukidar (Peoples Watch) & Ors. .In the instant case, the appellants had approached the Supreme Court challenging a judgment of the Patna High Court. The Patna High Court had held that the right to vote is a statutory right given by law and one of the prerequisites as per Section 62(5) of the Representation of People Act, 1951 (Act) to exercise the said right is that the concerned person should not be in lawful police custody..The High Court held that if a person is in lawful police custody, he will not be entitled to vote and will, therefore, cease to be an “elector” as defined in the Act. The High Court observed,.A right to vote is a statutory right, the Law gives it, the Law takes it away. Persons convicted of crime are kept away from elections to the Legislature, whetherto State Legislature or Parliament, and all other public elections. The Court has no hesitation in interpreting the Constitution and the Laws framed under it, read together, that persons in the lawful custody of the Police also will not be voters, in which case, they will neither be electors.The Law temporarily takes away the power of such persons to go anywhere near the election scene. To vote is a statutory right. It is privilege to vote, which privilege may be taken away. In that case, the elector would not be qualified, even if his name is on the electoral rolls. The name is not struck off, but the qualification to be an elector and the privilege to vote when in the lawful custody of the police is taken away..The Supreme Court refused to interfere with the interpretation of the Patna High Court and held that,.We do not find any infirmity in the findings of the High Court in the impugned common order that a person who has no right to vote by virtue of the provisions of sub-section (5) of Section 62 of the 1951 Act is not an elector and is therefore not qualified to contest the election to the House of the People or the Legislative Assembly of a State..The judgment is likely to have far reaching consequences as it will prevent persons in police custody from contesting elections. The same Bench of the Supreme Court had also struck down the constitutional vires of Section S. 8(4) of the Act which provided sitting MPs and MLAs an additional layer of protection from disqualification in case s/he was convicted of certain offences or had filed an appeal or revision against the order of his conviction..According to this report by ToI, around 31 per cent of the MPs and MLAs who voted in the presidential elections of 2012 had criminal cases pending against them. This decisions of the Supreme Court might well prove to be a check on criminal elements entering legislative bodies.