SC to hear pleas against pre-poll promises of freebies & for MCD elections

PTI, Jul 26, 2022, 10:01 AM IST

The Supreme Court on Tuesday is scheduled to hear a plea seeking direction to seize the symbol or deregister a party that promises or distributes “irrational freebies” before polls and a separate petition of the Aam Aadmi Party challenging the postponement of MCD polls on grounds of delimitation of wards in the national capital.

A bench headed by CJI N V Ramana on January 25 had issued notices to the Centre and the poll panel on the PIL of lawyer and BJP leader Ashwini Upadhyay seeking action against political parties for the irrational freebies.

Another bench headed by Justice A M Khanwilkar would consider the plea of Delhi’s ruling AAP challenging the postponement of the Municipal Corporations of Delhi (MCD) polls on grounds of delimitation of wards in the national capital.

The AAP says the unification of three MCDs and the consequential delimitation exercise cannot be a valid ground to defer the civic polls. The announcement of the election schedule for the three Delhi civic bodies was deferred in March this year and later, the Centre brought a Bill for the unification of MCDs.

The process relating to the delimitation of municipal wards is underway in Delhi.

A bench headed by senior judge Justice Uday Umesh Lalit would consider the plea of jailed ‘conman’ Sukesh Chandrashekhar and his wife seeking to shift them from the Tihar Jail on grounds of an alleged threat to their lives. The court, however, has widened the ambit of the proceedings by asking Chandrashekhar, who has claimed that Rs 12.5 crore was extorted from him by some officials at the Tihar Jail here, to submit the list of persons and details about the payments made on his behalf and questioned him as to who made the payment on his behalf.

The bench said it would go into the ”root of the matter”.

The plea of the Centre against activist Nandita Haksar would also be taken up for her alleged role in fleeing of illegal Rohingya immigrants. The top court had earlier stayed the order of the Manipur High Court permitting the seven Rohingyas to seek refugee status.