SC junks plea against ‘unprincipled’ post poll alliances

New Delhi, April 4 :

The Supreme Court Friday junked a PIL seeking to restrain “unethical post poll alliances” amongst the political parties that had taken diametrically opposite and conflicting positions during electioneering.

“Can we ask the political parties not to join this group or that group” in the post-election scenario, said a bench of Chief Justice P. Sathasivam and Justice Ranjan Gogoi as it refused to entertain the plea by a petitioner Rajender Dutt Vasdev.

As counsel Arup Banarjee said that political parties were creating a perverse situation by entering into unprincipled alliances, the court asked if it could control the political parties and tell them what course to pursue.

“Can court control political parties and tell them that you join this group or that group,” Chief Justice Sathasivam asked Vasdev.

“You can’t make a representation and then ask the court to issue directions to the Election Commission to consider it,” the court said as the petitioner sought direction to poll panel to consider his representation made to it Jan 16.

In an apparent disapproval of the plea, the court observed: “Do you think that Election Commission has got nothing else to do… as if Election Commission is free and sitting idle.”

Describing post poll alliance between the parties that took diametrically opposite ideological position during campaigning to garner votes as “an absolute mockery of citizens votes”, the PIL said that by such unethical alliances, citizens were being “beguiled by the political parties” that make a complete somersault on their stated positions during campaigning.

“Such turn over and tumbling from the stance on which voters voted is a betrayal of the promises made to the voters and the same is an infraction of the democratic norms.”

The PIL said that such “marriages of convenience” between “complete ideological strangers” results in parties falling from grace and engaging in horse trading after the elections.

Such “abominable practices are corrupting the basic nuances of democracy and are monstrous to the national interest”, it said.

(IANS)