Election law — the bar on mid-poll interference and the election-petition remedy, corrupt practices, candidate disclosure, NOTA, electoral bonds, EVM-VVPAT, and the model code of conduct.
A seven-judge Constitution Bench, by 4:3, read the word 'his' in section 123(3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 broadly. An appeal for votes on the ground of religion, race, caste, community or language — of the candidate, his agent, the rival, or the voter — is a corrupt practice. The dissent would have confined 'his' to the candidate.
The Supreme Court rejected the plea for 100% EVM-VVPAT cross-verification and a return to ballot papers, upholding the electronic voting system. But it issued fresh safeguard directions: sealing Symbol Loading Units for 45 days and allowing post-result checks of EVM microcontrollers on a losing candidate's written request.
The Supreme Court held that a voter's choice to reject every candidate is part of the freedom of expression under Article 19(1)(a), directed the Election Commission to add a 'None of the Above' button on EVMs and ballots, and required that the negative vote be cast in secrecy. Rules 41(2)&(3) and 49-O of the Conduct of Election Rules, to the extent they breached that secrecy, were struck down.
The Madras High Court (CJ S.A. Dharmadhikari and G. Arul Murugan J.) dismissed a PIL seeking to restrict candidature in Scheduled-Caste-reserved constituencies to those professing Hinduism, Sikhism or Buddhism. The Court held that Returning Officers already possess summary powers to reject fraudulent nominations, and that any grievance over a false declaration must be raised through an election petition, not a writ that micro-manages an election in motion.
A vacation bench of the Supreme Court dismissed Congress leader Meenakshi Natarajan's Article 32 challenge to the rejection of her Rajya Sabha nomination. The Court held that Article 329(b) insulates an ongoing election from writ intervention — however glaring the alleged illegality, the only remedy lies in an election petition once the poll is over.
On 24 December 2025, a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court held that availing a RERA remedy does not, by the doctrine of election, bar a buyer from seeking interim protection under Section 9 of the Arbitration Act — the remedies are contemporaneous where the reliefs do not overlap.
On 27 May 2026 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court — Chief Justice Surya Kant with Justice Joymalya Bagchi — upheld the Election Commission's Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls across Bihar and West Bengal and refused to interdict the ongoing roll-revision exercise in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Rajasthan. The Court held the SIR validly grounded in Article 324 read with the Representation of the People Act 1950 and the 1960 Rules, drew a doctrinal boundary between the Commission's electoral-roll citizenship inquiry and a Citizenship Act determination, and directed the Commission to forward to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs within four weeks the names of voters deleted on doubtful-citizenship grounds. A close reading of the ruling, its anchor in Mohinder Singh Gill and its place in the 2026-27 electoral cycle.
The May-June 2026 cycle in Indian election law has been an unusually consequential one. The Supreme Court upheld the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in ADR v. ECI on 27 May 2026, reserved verdict in the Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners Act 2023 hearings, declined to interdict the West Bengal SIR rollout before the April Assembly polling, watched the Raghav Chadha + 6 AAP Rajya Sabha MPs cross the floor under Tenth Schedule Paragraph 4 cover, saw the Delhi High Court dismiss a PIL to deregister AAP and disqualify Arvind Kejriwal, declined to interfere with Punjab municipal paper-ballot polling, watched the Election Commission issue an AI-content circular with a 3-hour social-media takedown discipline, and saw the Bombay and Allahabad High Courts shape the pleading and rallying architecture for election petitions and political campaigning. Read together, the cycle resets the operational architecture in which Indian election-law practice now runs.
On 7 November 1975, a five-judge Constitution Bench unanimously struck down Clause (4) of Article 329A — the Thirty-ninth Amendment's attempt to retroactively withdraw the Prime Minister's election from judicial scrutiny — as a violation of the basic structure. On the merits, the Court reversed the Allahabad High Court and upheld Mrs Gandhi's Rae Bareli election, but on statutory grounds: the retroactive amendments to the Representation of the People Act had taken the very corrupt-practice findings out from under Sinha J's judgment. The judgment installed free and fair elections, judicial review of election disputes and the rule of law as basic-structure components.
On 18 February 1992, a five-judge Constitution Bench upheld the Tenth Schedule's constitutional validity by a 3:2 majority but struck down Paragraph 7 — the absolute finality clause — for want of ratification under the proviso to Article 368(2). The majority held that the Speaker, when adjudicating disqualification under the Tenth Schedule, acts as a Tribunal whose decisions are subject to limited judicial review under Articles 136, 226 and 227 on grounds of jurisdictional error, mala fides, perversity, violation of constitutional mandates and breach of natural justice — ordinarily only after the final order. Sharma and Verma JJ dissented in part on severability.
On 5 February 2015 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court — Dipak Misra and Prafulla Pant JJ., the principal opinion authored by Dipak Misra J. — held that a candidate's non-disclosure of pending criminal cases in the Form 26 nomination affidavit, where charges have been framed or cognizance has been taken, amounts to 'undue influence' within Section 123(2) of the Representation of the People Act 1951 and is therefore a corrupt practice rendering the election liable to be set aside under Section 100(1)(b). The judgment elevates ECI Form 26 disclosure to constitutional and statutory significance and extends the framework to local-body elections.
On 27 August 2014 a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court — Lodha CJ, Dipak Misra, Lokur, Kurian Joseph and Bobde JJ., the principal opinion authored by Dipak Misra J. — declined to read an implied disqualification into Article 75(1) prohibiting the Prime Minister from advising the appointment of persons facing serious criminal charges. Where the Constitution had prescribed no bar, the Court held, judicial mandamus could not constrict the Prime Minister's discretion. The Bench held, instead, that the Prime Minister was under a 'constitutional expectation' — emanating from constitutional morality, good governance and the trust reposed in high constitutional office — not to recommend the appointment of persons against whom charges had been framed for heinous or serious offences. The judgment is the analytical seedbed of the constitutional-morality strand in modern Indian constitutional adjudication.
On 2 December 1977, a five-judge Constitution Bench held that Article 324 vests the Election Commission of India with plenary and residuary powers wherever statute or rules are silent, but that those powers must be exercised consistently with natural justice and on reasons stated when the order is made — not on reasons supplied later by affidavit. The judgment also reaffirmed that Article 329(b) bars judicial interference with the election process between notification and declaration, leaving the election petition as the sole post-result remedy.
On 25 September 2018 a five-judge Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice Dipak Misra — Misra CJ, Nariman, Khanwilkar, Chandrachud and Indu Malhotra JJ. — declined to judicially bar persons against whom charges had been framed from contesting elections, holding that the disqualification regime under Articles 102 and 191 read with Section 8 of the Representation of the People Act 1951 is exhaustive and that only Parliament can add. The Bench instead issued five binding directions on Form 26 disclosure, party-website publication and three-times newspaper-and-electronic-media publicity post-nomination, and urged Parliament to legislate decriminalisation. The framework was extended in Rambabu Singh Thakur (2020) — 48-hour publication and selection-reasons requirement — and enforced through contempt in Brajesh Singh (2021).
On 13 March 2003, a three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court struck down Section 33B of the Representation of the People Act 1951 — inserted by the 2002 Amendment to neutralise the Court's direction in ADR (2002) — as unconstitutional and violative of Article 19(1)(a). The Court reaffirmed that the voter's right to know the criminal antecedents, assets, liabilities and educational qualifications of candidates is part of the freedom of speech and expression, and read down Section 33A as supplementing — not supplanting — the wider disclosure regime articulated by the Court and the Election Commission. Justice Dharmadhikari concurred in part and dissented in part.
On 11 May 2023 a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court unanimously delivered Subhash Desai v. Principal Secretary, Governor of Maharashtra — the apex court's most consequential Tenth Schedule ruling since Kihoto Hollohan. The Court held the Governor's 30 June 2022 floor-test call unjustified, declined to restore the Thackeray Government because of Uddhav Thackeray's voluntary resignation, struck down the Speaker's recognition of a rival whip on the principle that the whip is appointed by the political party and not the legislature party, and referred Nabam Rebia to a seven-judge bench. A close reading of the architecture, the doctrinal lines, and the unfinished business.
On 6 May 2014, a five-judge Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice R.M. Lodha struck down Section 6A of the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act 1946 — the statutory revival of the executive 'Single Directive' that this Court had abrogated in Vineet Narain (1998) — as violative of Article 14. The judgment closes the doctrinal arc: an administrative immunity, struck down in 1997-98, cannot be reintroduced in legislative form when the underlying constitutional defect remains. The decision became the analytical scaffold for CBI v. R.R. Kishore (2023) and frames the still-pending challenge to Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1988 inserted by the 2018 amendment.
On 29 November 2006, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court held that the SARFAESI Act 2002 and the RDDBFI Act 1993 are complementary, not mutually exclusive: a secured creditor may simultaneously prosecute a Debts Recovery Tribunal Original Application under Section 19 of the 1993 Act and a Section 13 SARFAESI enforcement without first withdrawing the OA. The doctrine of election does not apply. The first proviso to Section 19(1) of the 1993 Act does not require withdrawal as a condition precedent — the Section 13(2) notice is a show-cause step, not 'action' within the meaning of the proviso. Section 13(4) 'possession' extends to physical possession.
On 15 February 2024, a five-judge Constitution Bench unanimously struck down the Electoral Bonds Scheme and the Finance Act, 2017 amendments to the RBI Act, Companies Act, Income Tax Act, and Representation of the People Act that had enabled it. The judgment held the architecture violated the voter's right to information under Article 19(1)(a), failed the proportionality test, and could not be sustained on the asserted ground of donor confidentiality. A digest of the bench, the doctrinal logic, the consequential directions to SBI to disclose bond purchase and redemption data, and what the judgment now requires.
On 2 March 2023, a five-judge Constitution Bench unanimously held that the Chief Election Commissioner and Election Commissioners must, until Parliament legislates, be appointed by the President on the recommendation of a committee comprising the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, and the Chief Justice of India. Parliament's response — the Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Act, 2023 — replaced the CJI with a Union Cabinet Minister, and the constitutional challenges to the Act are now pending. A digest of the judgment, the committee architecture, and the contested response.
On 19 April 2017, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court held that the parties' designation of a seat of arbitration operates as an exclusive jurisdiction clause — vesting the courts at the seat with exclusive supervisory jurisdiction even where no cause of action arose there. The decision imported the international seat-as-jurisdiction principle into Indian domestic arbitration and supplied the analytic engine for the seat-versus-venue line in BGS SGS Soma JV, Mankastu Impex and Hardy Exploration.
On 4 February 2026 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court — Justices Sanjay Kumar and K. Vinod Chandran — set aside the NCDRC's order of 23 August 2023 holding that a consumer complaint was maintainable despite prior RERA proceedings. The Court held that where two concurrent fora are available for the same cause of action, the homebuyer must elect one; having elected RERA, the homebuyer cannot retract to a parallel consumer-forum remedy on the same grievance. The decision narrows the concurrent-jurisdiction rule of Imperia Structures (2020) by overlaying election-of-remedies discipline — concurrent jurisdiction is preserved as a menu choice, not a buffet allowing migration mid-litigation. Concurrent jurisdiction at the outset is preserved; what is foreclosed is successive recourse to a second forum after election.
On 10 July 2013, a two-judge bench of Justices A.K. Patnaik and S.J. Mukhopadhaya struck down Section 8(4) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 — the provision that had given sitting MPs and MLAs three months from conviction to appeal before facing disqualification. The judgment held that Parliament had no constitutional competence to enact the exception: Articles 102(1)(e) and 191(1)(e) of the Constitution operate as immediate disqualifications on conviction. A digest of the holding, the constitutional reasoning, and the political-historical consequences.
A three-judge Bench in 2014 overruled the looser reading of Section 65B that had governed electronic-evidence admissibility for nine years, and held that a certificate under sub-section (4) is a condition precedent. The reasoning, the overruling of *Navjot Sandhu*, and the question of how the doctrine now travels onto Section 63 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam.
Six years after Anvar P.V., the three-judge Bench of Nariman, Bhat and Ramasubramanian JJ. returned to Section 65B — to settle a doctrinal drift that had crept in through *Shafhi Mohammad* and to clarify the certificate framework at the boundaries. A digest of the holding, the relaxation that wasn't, and how the framework now travels onto Section 63 BSA.