While deciding a PIL by NGO Resurgence India, the Supreme Court held that nominations of those candidates who leave the columns in their affidavit blank can be rejected by the returning officer.
The bench of Justice P. Sathasivam, Ranjana Prakash Desai and Ranjan Gogoi held as follows;
“(i) The voter has the elementary right to know full particulars of a candidate who is to represent him in the Parliament/Assemblies and such right to get information is universally recognized. Thus, it is held that right to know about the candidate is a natural right flowing from the concept of democracy and is an integral part of Article 19(1) (a) of the Constitution.
(ii) The ultimate purpose of filing of affidavit along with the nomination paper is to effectuate the fundamental right of the citizens under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution of India. The citizens are supposed to have the necessary information at the time of filing of nomination paper and for that purpose, the Returning Officer can very well compel a candidate to furnish the relevant information.
(iii) Filing of affidavit with blank particulars will render the affidavit nugatory.
(iv) It is the duty of the Returning Officer to check whether the information required is fully furnished at the time of filing of affidavit with the nomination paper since such information 24 Page 25 is very vital for giving effect to the ‘right to know’ of the citizens. If a candidate fails to fill the blanks even after the reminder by the Returning Officer, the nomination paper is fit to be rejected. We do comprehend that the power of Returning Officer to reject the nomination paper must be exercised very sparingly but the bar should not be laid so high that the justice itself is prejudiced.
(v) We clarify to the extent that Para 73 of People’s Union for Civil Liberties case (supra) will not come in the way of the Returning Officer to reject the nomination paper when affidavit is filed with blank particulars.
(vi) The candidate must take the minimum effort to explicitly remark as ‘NIL’ or ‘Not Applicable’ or ‘Not known’ in the columns and not to leave the particulars blank.
(vii) Filing of affidavit with blanks will be directly hit by Section 125A(i) of the RP Act”
Hemant Goswami, secretary of Resurgence India told that Resurgence India had filed the present writ after Resurgence undertook a massive exercise under the banner “Punjab Election Watch’ and affidavits pertaining to the candidates of six major political parties in the State were analyzed in order to verify their completeness. During such campaign, large scale irregularities were found in most of the affidavits filed by the candidates. A representation was made to the Election Commission of India regarding large number of non-disclosures in the affidavits filed by the contestants in the State of Punjab and poor level of scrutiny by the Returning Officers. However the Election Commission of India expressed its inability in rejecting the nomination papers of the candidates solely due to furnishing of false/incomplete information in the affidavits.
Sh. Hitender Jain, President of Resurgence India who had pursued the matter since 2007 expressed his satisfaction with the Supreme Court order and said, “This will open up a new chapter in making all candidates more accountable to the public. It will also end the era of concealment of facts by candidates by filing incorrect or blank affidavits.”