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.