New Delhi: Sanjay Dutt, Pappu Yadav, Mohammed Shahabuddin, Suraj Singh, Anand Mohan... all aspiring MPs, all convicted felons and all getting ready to approach the courts to suspend their guilty verdicts so they can contest the general elections.
The hurdle in their way to the Lok Sabha is Section 8 (3) of the Representation of the People Act of 1951 that stipulates that any person convicted for a crime and sentenced to more than two years of jail term will not run elections till six years after the completion of his sentence.
This can be overcome by approaching the Supreme Court if the conviction was by an anti-terror court, or by a high court in other cases.
And that is precisely the window that politicians like Rashtriya Janata Dal MPs Rajiv Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav and Mohammad Shahabuddin, former union telecom minister Sukhram, Lok Janshakti Party MP Suraj Singh and former Janata Dal-United (JD-U) MP Anand Mohan are looking at, say legal experts.
In doing so, they will cite the case of cricketer-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu, who got a reprieve in 2007 when the Supreme Court suspended his conviction in a case of unintentional killing to enable him to contest the parliamentary by-election in Amritsar. Sidhu won.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment