ADR has approached the Election Commission of India to seek action against some political parties. Let us know why.

The Association for Democratic Reforms abbreviated as (ADR), a watchdog group established by IIM in the year 1999, wrote to the Election Commission asking for action against the political parties that do not publish details regarding criminal records as ordered by the apex court of India.

“ADR is seeking strict action to be initiated against the defaulting political parties, which had contested the 2023 Assembly elections held in Tripura, Meghalaya, Nagaland, and Karnataka, 2022 Assembly elections held in Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa, Manipur, and Punjab and 2021 Assembly elections held in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam and UT of Puducherry,” said the letter.

ADR is an independent watchdog have consistently raised concerns over political parties putting forward members with criminal antecedents. Post the elections of Lok Sabha in the year 2019, as per the ADR, a total of 43 percent of freshly-elected MPs had criminal cases pending against them.

What did the Supreme Court say?

A petition filed by Public Interest Litigation in the matter was heard by the Supreme Court. On 15th September 2018, the apex court mandated the political parties to publish details of criminal cases that are pending against their party candidates, even on their official websites, in the Election Commission-provided format. The candidates had already provided the details of pending cases against them in the election affidavits to the Election Commission of India prior to the ruling, the Supreme Court still made it mandatory for the candidates to publicly publish these details.

Further, the Supreme Court has instructed the parties to publish the information of criminal cases pending against their candidates in bold letters. Moreover, the apex court also directed the candidates having such a background criminal record to inform the party about such cases. The apex court also instructed that both the party and the candidate are supposed to publish the details at least three times after filing the nomination.

"We are inclined to say so, for in a constitutional democracy, criminalization of politics is an extremely disastrous and lamentable situation," observed the apex court. 

In February 2020, the court heard a contempt petition relating to the non-implementation of its 2018 order, the Supreme Court stated that the parties would require to publish the information of candidates with pending criminal cases against them. The apex court also said that they would also require to mention the reasons for which the selection of such a candidate was done.

The court further clarified that these reasons shall be with reference to factors like the merit of the candidate, achievements, and qualifications, and not merely the "winnability" of the candidate at the polls. The Supreme Court stated that the details would be required to be published in a local vernacular newspaper, the official social media platforms of the party, and one national newspaper within a period of 48 hours of the selection or not less than two weeks prior to the very first date of nominations, whichever of the dates is earlier. Moreover, the parties would then be required to submit a compliance report to the Election Commission of India within 72 hours.