Wednesday, January 12 2005 16:40 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: In a significant order ahead of the elections in Bihar and Haryana, the Supreme Court has ruled that an exception in the election law to allow continuance of an MLA even if convicted during his term could not be used to contest the next polls.

This order, which would be a step forward to weed out criminals from politics, was delivered by a five-Judge constitution Bench headed by Chief Justice R C Lahoti, while allowing a petition filed by Ramesh Dalal challenging the election of Nafe Singh from Bahadurgarh in Haryana.

Under Section 8(4) of RP Act, sitting MLAs and MPs, if convicted and sentenced to two years imprisonment during their tenure as member of the Assembly or Parliament, were allowed to continue if their appeal against the order of conviction was pending with a higher court.

However, as was noticed by the Court, many of these MLAs and MPs were using this exception to convince the Returning Officer, while filing nominations for the next election, that their conviction had been stayed under the exception clause and hence allowed to contest the elections.

Justice Lahoti, writing for self and on behalf of Justice S V Patil, Justice B N Srikrishna and Justice G P Mathur, said the saving from disqualification was pre-conditioned by the person convicted being a Member of a House on the date of conviction.

"The benefit of such saving is available only so long as the House continues to exist and the person continues to be a member of a House. The saving ceases to apply if the House is dissolves or the person ceases to be a Member of the House," the Court said.