HC asks govt, EC to reply in the Sikkim CM's disqualification case

The Delhi High Court on Tuesday asked the Centre and the EC to respond to a plea challenging the poll panel's decision to reduce the 6-year disqualification period of Sikkim Chief Minister Prem Singh Tamang, convicted and sentenced in a graft case, to just 13 months.

Court has posted the matter for December 24

A bench of Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice C Hari Shankar also issued a notice to the state government and Tamang seeking their replies on the plea challenging a provision of the Representation of People Act which gives power to the Election Commission (EC) to remove or reduce the disqualification period. The court has posted the matter for December 24.

Tamang, whose Sikkim Krantikari Morcha party won the state Assembly elections in April, took over as chief minister on May 27. However, he could not contest the elections due to his disqualification. He is required to contest Assembly elections within six months of becoming the Chief Minister to continue to hold the office. He was convicted and sentenced to one-year imprisonment for offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act on December 26, 2016. He completed the one year sentence on August 10, 2018.

The petition filed by Dek Bahadur Katwal, General Secretary of Sikkim Democratic Front, said Section 11 of the RP Act, 1951 is unconstitutional as it provides uncanalised /uncontrolled/arbitrary power to the EC to remove or reduce the disqualification period. He also challenged the EC's September 29 order, passed a day before the last date of filing nomination, by which Tamang's six years period of disqualification was reduced by 4 years and 11 months. Katwal said the EC's order is wholly erroneous, based on perverse reasoning and is bad in law.

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The petition filed by Sudershan Goel, Siddharth Sharma and Shruti Arora said that Section 11 of the RP Act is against the object and purpose of the Act, as it was enacted to disqualify convicted persons, for six years, from contesting elections in India.

"The object of the said Act is to ensure criminal elements are kept away from the democratic process in India, and for the larger interest of the public," it said.

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The plea said the power enumerated under the section is quasi-judicial and must be exercised in the rarest of the rarest case, as "it takes away from the deterrent value of the statute when the need is to ensure that elections are free from candidates with criminal antecedents. In the present case, the EC's order has the immediate effect of condoning the 6 years' disqualification under section 8 to merely 1 year and 1 month".

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"While this may seem to be an innocuous condonation; the fact that condonation was granted just before the fresh State elections were to be held, demonstrates arbitrariness. The only inference from the period condoned, that is, 4 years 11 months, seems to be for the specific purposes of allowing the candidate to contest the State elections," it said.

The petition claimed that the reasons given in the EC's order are perverse and frivolous and the intention was to "facilitate/ensure that the respondent no. 4 (Tamang) remains as Chief Minister of Sikkim". The corruption case pertained to Tamang's tenure as State Animal Husbandry Minister, when he was accused of misappropriating funds of Rs 9.5 lakh in the procurement of cows in 1996-97. 

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