The Supreme
Court on Tuesday made it mandatory for political parties to make criminal
records of their poll candidates public within 48 hours of their selection in
addition to stating why they were chosen to contest elections.

In a major
step towards decriminalisation of politics, the apex court’s ruling comes after a petition filed
by advocate Brajesh Mishra asked for contempt against political parties for not
abiding by previous Supreme Court orders, The Hindu reported. The petition also
asked for symbols of the respective parties to be suspended from elections if
they fail to disclose their candidates’ criminal background.

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In a ruling
in February last year in connection with the Bihar assembly election in November,
the court had mandated candidates to release their criminal background within
48 hours of selection or at least two weeks before the first date of filing nomination
papers.  

“If a
political party fails to submit such compliance report with the Election Commission,
the Election Commission shall bring such non-compliance by the political party
concerned to the notice of the Supreme Court as being in contempt of this court’s
orders/direction,” the court had said.

The window for
releasing criminal background has now been limited to only 48 hours.

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A bench of Justices
Rohinton Nariman and BR Gavai also directed parties to disclose why those candidates
had been selected and disclose details of their cases on their party website.
The Election Commission had earlier asked political parties to publish such
information in newspapers.

The
Communist Party of India (CPI(M)) and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) have
both issued an unconditional apology to the court for failing it abide by its
directives and not disclosing their candidates’ criminal records prior to the
Bihar assembly polls.

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Senior
advocate Vikas Singh, representing the Election Commission, said that the NCP
had fielded 26 candidates with criminal antecedents and the CPI(M) chose four
candidates with criminal records.

“We don’t
but this ‘sorry’, our orders have to be followed,” Justice Nariman said.