Govt opposes PIL on LS poll losers getting into RS

The government on Thursday registered its opposition over maintainability of a PIL in the Delhi High Court seeking to restrain candidates defeated in a Lok Sabha election from contesting the Rajya Sabha polls.

"Such kind of petitions are not maintainable. There are Supreme Court order also in this regard," the government told a bench of justices G S Sistani and Vinod Goel.

The bench also raised a question on the locus of the petitioner, who contended that candidates defeated in Lok Sabha polls should not be nominated to the Upper House.

It asked the petitioner, Satya Narayan Prasad, "do you know anyone who has been made Member of Parliament of Rajya Sabha after losing a Lok Sabha election? Even they (MPs) have not been made party in your writ petition."

The court, however, listed the matter for further hearing on April 10. The petitioner, who claims to be a social activist, has moved the court saying that India being a democracy and the people being supreme, "it is a misfortune that politicians who are defeated in the general elections are nominated to the Upper House".

Seeking a direction to the Ministry of Law and Justice and the Election Commission of India, the petitioner has said "any candidate who contested Lok Sabha election and has been defeated, he be declared disqualified for being an MP. Such candidates cannot be nominated or allowed to contest in Rajya Sabha election".

Pleading for special rules to bar leaders who have lost Lok Sabha polls from contesting in Rajya Sabha election, the petitioner said action should be taken against those concerned who have "wrongly nominated such disqualified candidates for membership in Parliament".

While candidates are elected to Lok Sabha directly by the people, members of Rajya Sabha are elected by the elected members of state assemblies in accordance with the system of proportional representation by means of single transferable vote.

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