New Delhi: A PIL has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking laying down of guidelines to prevent dissolution of the Lok Sabha and state assemblies before their prescribed term of five years.
The petition filed by All India Muslim OBC Organisation stated in its petition that such frequent elections have caused the nation, in terms of expenditure on frequent polls in the last 56 years. A Bench headed by Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan directed the petitioner to file a detailed affidavit alongwith relevant statistics in its support.
The petitioner contended that the intention of the framers of the Constitution was that unless and untill there are grave and compelling circumstances the term of the House should not be dissolved before the completiton of five years. It was pointed out in the petition that citizens cast their vote in the hope that their representatives would run the government for a full five-year term but that was not happening due to political reasons which should be stopped.
The petition further said that in case of dissolution of House, the President should apply and use his discretion instead of following government's recommendation for dissolution without checking the feeling of the house. "The working of Indian democracy for the last 57 years has seen almost 16 elections as compared to 12 elections if it had been held only after five years as envisaged by the Constitution of India," the petition said.
