Top court offers a poser on socialism
As liberalisation is new the mantra, should political parties in the country be forced to “swear” by “socialist ideology” to get themselves registered with the Election Commission?
This important constitutional question was raised on Monday in the Supreme Court in a PIL, seeking to strike down the Representation of People Act (RPA) provision making it mandatory for every party to declare “allegiance” to “socialism” if they want to register as political party with the EC for contesting elections.
The provision listed in Section 29-A(5) of the RPA was challenged the NGO, Good Governance India Foundation, whose counsel Gopal Shankaranarayanan argued before a bench, headed by Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia that if a political party supported the capitalist ideology should it be denied registration. “This will be wholly undemocratic,” he said.
But the top court bench, having Justices S.K. Radhakrishnan and Swatanter Kumar as the other judges, asked a specific question to the NGO counsel whether he had also challenged the presence of the word “socialism” in the “preamble ” of the Constitution, inserted by the 42nd amendment.
As Mr Shankranarayanan said that the NGO had not “bothered” about it as it was rather concerned about the bar on the registering political parties if they do not “swear” by socialism, the top court said it could not be challenged independent of the Constitution.
“RPA has to be in consonance with the Constitution. If you give up the challenge (to presence of world socialism in the preamble, then you can’t challenge it in the RPA as elections are held as per the Constitution,” the bench said.
The top court observed, “if you say no (to the challenge to the insertion of world socialism in the preamble) then don’t contest the election,” making it clear that the two could not be separated with each other.
The top court even gave a choice to NGO’s counsel to amend his petition and make it specific to the challenge to the “insertion” of word “socialism” in the preamble.
The NGO though had built up its case around the 42nd amendment made by the Indira Gandhi government during Emergency, inserting words “socialism” and “secularism” in the preamble, it only challenged the subsequent amendment in RPA making “swearing” by socialism before EC mandatory for registration of a political party.
Comments
This is indeed hypocritical
Virendra Yadav
06 Jul 2010 - 09:49
This is indeed hypocritical to make it mandatory to swear by socilism to get registered by EC for a political party. Earlier this anachronistic provision is removed the better. How can a BJP be compelled to declare allegiance to the values it does not believe in? Moreover, in these days of liberalisation and free flow of capital, it is plain and simple untruth to declare faith in socialism while working for capitalism.
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