Patna High Court delivered seven judgments on October 31, 2025 in Uma Pandey vs. Munna Pandey, Swarnima Gupta @ Anita Gupta, vs. Barun Kumar Choudhary, Kishor Kunal vs. The State of Bihar, Bhawa Nand Jha vs. The State of Bihar, Chunchun Kumar vs. The Union of India & Ors., Prakash Chandra Roy vs. Union Bank Of India & Anr. and Rit Lal Yadav @ Rit Lal Rai vs. The State of Bihar through the Chief Secretary, Government of Bihar.
In Rit Lal Yadav @ Rit Lal Rai vs. The State of Bihar through the Chief Secretary, Government of Bihar (2025), Justice Arun Kumar Jha of Patna High Court delivered a 33-page long judgement, wherein, he concluded: "....it is clear that when alternative remedy is available, the power under Article 226 could be exercised under certain conditions/contingencies and none of these conditions are present in the case of the petitioner. Therefore, the petitioner has approached this Court under some misconceived notion. If the petitioner was already before this Court by filing of bail petition and also before the learned trial court seeking regular bail, an equally efficacious remedy was available to the petitioner but he did not pursue the said remedy. 26. Moreover, considering the antecedent and background of the petitioner and pressing demand of the time that the Indian polity should be purged of criminal elements, the prayer of the petitioner could not be acceded to."
He added: "A balance should be struck between the rights of citizens who deserve a clean India and rights of undertrial prisoners in custody who want to participate in the election process. Obviously the balance will tilt in the favour of common citizens. The people of India should be given a choice to elect people with clean image and antecedents and hence, this Court is of the considered opinion that allowing a person with criminal antecedents of serious nature, would not be in larger interest of the society and would not further the cause of democratic institutions. 27. Therefore, having regard to the facts and circumstances in totality, I am not inclined to entertain the present writ petition and finding no merit, the present writ petition stands dismissed."
Rit Lal Yadav was represented by Y. C. Verma, senior advocate and Advocates namely, Dr. Gopal Krishna, Ghanshyam Tiwary, Vikas Kumar Jha, Adarsh Singh, Saloj Kumar Rai, Khalil Faizan, Harsh Kumar, Rahul Deo Varman, Abhinav Kumar and Prinyanka Singh.
Drawing on Supreme Court's decision in paragraph-5 in Vishwanath Pratap Singh vs. Election Commission of India and Anr. (decided on 09.09.2022, Special Leave to Appeal (Civil) No. 13013 of 2022), Justice Jha observed:"Thus, there is no doubt that the right to canvass and campaign for getting elected in an election is not a fundamental right. It is only a statutory right on which restriction can be imposed by statutes."
No comments:
Post a Comment