A Delhi BJP leader filed a Public Interest Litigation in the Supreme Court on Wednesday challenging the validity of a provision in the Representation of the People Act, 1951, according to which a lawmaker stands disqualified if convicted and sentenced to more than two years of jail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Delhi BJP leader and lawyer Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay contended the provision was \u201carbitrary\u201d and that services of public servants were terminated regardless of the severity of their sentence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPublic servants are terminated from their services if convicted and sentenced to imprisonment even for two days. But, Section 8(3) of the Representation of the People Act protects the legislators from disqualification Hence, it is manifestly arbitrary, irrational and violative of Article 14 of the Constitution,\u201d read the petition,\u201d the petitioner said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPresently 159 (29 per cent) MPs have declared serious criminal cases including cases related to rape, murder, attempt to murder, kidnapping, crimes against women etc,\u201d the petitioner said, adding, out of 542 elected candidates analysed after 2014 Lok Sabha elections, 112 (21%) had declared serious criminal cases against themselves,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Section Section 8(3) of the Act was \u201cvoid and unconstitutional\u201d as it shielded criminal lawmakers from disqualification, while public servants if convicted were removed, dismissal or compulsory retired, he contended.While out of 543 successful candidates analysed after 2009 Lok Sabha election, 76 had declared serious criminal cases against themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSo, there is an increase of 109 per cent in the number of returned candidates with declared serious criminal cases since 2009,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Delhi BJP leader filed a Public Interest Litigation in the Supreme Court on Wednesday challenging the validity of a provision in the Representation of the People Act, 1951, according to which a lawmaker stands disqualified if convicted and sentenced to more than two years of jail. Delhi BJP leader and lawyer Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":71203,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[312],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71202"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71204,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71202\/revisions\/71204"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}