RIGHT TO PRIVACY OF ELECTION CANDIDATES
The Supreme Court on Tuesday held that an election candidate has a right to privacy from voters and need not lay out every scrap of his or her personal life and possessions, past and present, for the electorate to examine with a magnifying glass.
THE JUDGEMENT
A Bench of Justices Aniruddha Bose and Sanjay Kumar said a candidate’s choice to retain his privacy on matters which were of no concern to the voters or were irrelevant to his candidature for public office did not amount to a ‘corrupt practice’ under Section 123 of the representation of People act, 1951.
Such non-disclosure would not amount to a “defect of a substantial nature” under section 36(4) of the 1951 Act.
Justice Kumar, who wrote the judgment, observed there was no compulsion on a candidate to lay his life threadbare for the electorate to prod and scrutinise.
SIZEABLE ASSET DISCLOSURE
It is not necessary that a candidate declare every item of movable property that he or his dependent family members own, unless these items are of such value as to constitute a sizeable asset in itself or reflect upon his candidature, in terms of his lifestyle, and require to be disclosed,” Justice Kumar distinguished.
But the Court said every case would turn on its own peculiarities on what would amount to a non-disclosure of assets of a substantial nature.
Suppressing information about a collection of expensive watches from voters would be a substantial defect.
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