Kamal Ghorui
NEW DELHI: Prashant Kishor-headed Jan Suraaj Party on Friday was criticised by the Supreme Court for filing a writ petition seeking annulment of recently concluded Bihar assembly elections on the ground that the poll-eve Rs 10,000 dole to women was a corrupt practice that altered the level-playing field. “How many votes did your party get? People rejected you in the elections. Now you want to use the judicial platform to garner popularity,” said a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi. JSP contested 238 seats and failed to win a single seat mustering a poor 3.4% of the votes. The party got less votes than NOTA in 68 constituencies. JSP’s counsel C U Singh said that the distribution of Rs 10,000 under the Mukhyamantri Mahila Rojgar Yojna, amounting to a total of Rs 15,600 crore, during the period when the model code of conduct for election was in force amounted to corrupt practice. Terming the doles as freebies, Singh said Bihar is one of the top five fiscal deficit states, and spending such a huge amount from exchequer without economic planning would further impact its financial health. The SC bench said, “There is a difference between legal and constitutional questions and fiscal policy. If a governing political party is causing harm to the state through its economic policy, then it is for the people to vote it out. We cannot entertain such petitions. It is an omnibus election petition seeking to annul the entire election.” “You file an election petition for each constituency and prove that because of the corrupt practice the candidate has won. Otherwise, if a candidate has won by a margin of 10,000 votes and there were only 1,000 women who got the dole, why should his election be set aside,” the bench asked. When the counsel continued to persuade the court to examine the legality and constitutionality of election-eve freebies, the bench said it would seriously examine the issue in the pending petitions but not at the instance of a political party which lost the election badly. “All political parties indulge in the same freebies game once they come to power,” the bench said. “Why did you not challenge it when the announcement was made about giving Rs 10,000 to each woman in Bihar by the govt,” the SC bench said. It told the party to move Patna high court. “You withdraw the petition and file a petition in the HC. We will have the benefit of HC’s view,” the bench said. JSR withdrew its petition.
