Plea before Supreme Court to permit undertrial politicians to campaign for elections

A plea has been filed before the Supreme Court seeking directions to allow politicians who are in jail as under trial prisoners, to campaign for elections at least via video conference [Amarjeet Gupta v Election Commission of India & Ors]..The Delhi High Court had earlier dismissed the petitioner's public interest litigation (PIL) petition on the issue, prompting him to file the present appeal before the top court.The plea filed by a law student, Amarjeet Gupta, has challenged the Delhi High Court's May 1 order.The plea before the High Court had also questioned the timing of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's arrest. The petitioner has said that the High Court ignored the larger public interest issue raised in the case. He has also urged the Supreme Court to expunge certain adverse remarks in the May 1 order, in which it had said that the plea was filed for publicity..In his plea, Gupta has argued that the High Court erroneously assumed that he had challenged Kejriwal's arrest. "Nowhere in the petition, the petitioner had challenged the arrest of the National Convenor of Aam Aadmi Party. It was only stated that the petitioner was aggrieved with the timing of the arrest of the said leader," Gupta submitted.He further asserted that he was on the larger issue of under trial politicians in jail having a right to campaign during an election, as long as they have not been convicted for their alleged crime.“The right to political campaign by a candidate is a prerequisite to avail the benefit of the right to contest an election, despite being in prison, when not convicted by a court of competent jurisdiction.”He argued that if it is not possible to release such prisoners from jail for electoral campaigns, they should at least be allowed to exercise their right to campaign through video conferencing. This way, concerns regarding whether special treatment is being given to politicians as compared to common citizens can be averted, he pointed out.The petitioner added that not developing such a mechanism to allow under-trial political leaders in jail to even campaign virtually violates the level playing field during elections..Gupta has also suggested that the Union of India should provide information about the arrest of a political party leader or a candidate immediately to the Election Commission of India (ECI), when the model code of conduct (MCC) is in force..The plea before the top court has been filed through advocate Manoj K Srivastava and drawn by advocate Md. Imran Ahmad.