The court has asked political parties to explain why they choose candidates with criminal backgrounds. On February 13, in a short four-page order, the Supreme Court asked political parties to explain why they choose candidates with criminal antecedents over those without a record. The verdict was passed in a contempt case that emerged out of a 2019 ruling in Public Interest Foundation and Others. v. Union of India. In that judgement, the Supreme Court refused to accept a prayer that wanted persons with criminal backgrounds to be barred from contesting elections. The court said expanding disqualification provisions should be left to the Parliament and the court cannot enter the domain of legislation.However, the court did issue a slew of guidelines making it mandatory for political parties to give wide publicity to the criminal cases faced by their candidates. The contempt petition was filed alleging that these guidelines have not been followed properly. In its judgement last week, a two-judge bench consisting of Justices RF Nariman and S Ravindra Bhat expanded these guidelines invoking the court’s powers to issue orders to do complete justice under Article 142 of the Constitution. Additional guidelines The court put in place six additional guidelines over and above those prescribed in the 2019 judgement. The most important of these is the direction to political parties to explain why they chose a candidate with criminal background over probables with no criminal cases against them. The court said the reasons for the selection “shall be with reference to the qualifications, achievements and merit of the candidate concerned, and not mere ‘winnability’ at the polls”. This explanation has to be in newspapers and social media “within 48 hours of the selection of the candidate or not less than two weeks before the first date for filing of nominations, whichever is earlier.” The court then directed the Election Commission to bring to its notice if any political party fails to submit a compliance report fulfilling the stipulations provided in the guidelines. The main question that arises is what would be the outcome if a political party selects a candidate with criminal background and fails to file the compliance report? Contempt proceedings will be initiated against the political party for failing to adhere to the guidelines. But will the selected candidate be debarred from contesting? The answer is no. The court has not said in the judgement that such a candidate would be disqualified since it has already held that it cannot expand the disqualification provisions to include criminal antecedent as a basis. If the nomination of the candidate is accepted, the Supreme Court is in no position to interfere in the election process. Usually, violations would be brought to the court after the election process is over through an election petition. It remains to be seen what impact the guidelines asking for an explanation on the selection of a particular candidate will have on the electoral scene. In India, elections are most often fought between parties with prominent faces as candidates. The idea of the ruling could be that voters would begin to think harder about the political system if they knew that a party chose a tainted leader even though there was a clean one at hand. Thus, it becomes an exercise of creating awareness on the impact of money and muscle power on the system and would hopefully discourage parties from choosing dubious candidates. However, it is disconcerting that the court does not follow the standards of transparency that it demands from others.