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 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 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 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.