The Supreme Court on Monday declined a plea for temporary release of Maharashtra ex-home minister Anil Deshmukh and cabinet minister Nawab Malik to cast vote at the Maharashtra Legislative Council (MLC) polls, being held today.
Both Deshmukh and Malik are in judicial custody currently.
A vacation bench of Justices CT Ravikumar and Sudhanshu Dhulia, however, said it will consider further interpretation of Section 62(5) of Representation of People's Act 1951, which imposes bar on a prisoner from voting.
The apex court said it will examine whether arrested MLAs and MPs would be allowed to vote in elections to Rajya Sabha and Legislative Councils.
They sought direction to allow their temporary release to cast vote using police escorts.
Senior advocate Meenakshi Arora, appearing for the NCP leaders, told the bench that they are seeking to exercise their rights as representatives of their constituencies to cast their votes to the legislative council.
"I am before this court as an elected member of a constituency. Rather than being a statutory right, right to vote is also a constitutional right. I am an elected representative of my constituency and people who have voted for me and have sent me to Legislative Assembly, I represent them," Arora argued on behalf of NCP leaders.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta appearing for Centre opposed the pleas saying that the constitutional validity of Section 62(5) RP Act was upheld by the Supreme Court. The bench also made a prima facie observation that this provision might be "slightly undemocratic".
The bench mentioned that as a prisoner both Deshmukh and Malik can contest elections but not vote and cited the provision to be slightly undemocratic.
"A prisoner has the right to get voted, but he cannot vote. We have not made up our mind, but we feel that this provision is slightly undemocratic."
The two Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) MLAs Malik and Deshmukh are presently incarcerated as undertrial prisoners in separate money laundering cases being investigated by the Enforcement Directorate.
Malik is presently in a hospital, albeit under Judicial custody.
The trial court had earlier denied Malik and Deshmukh permission to vote for the June 10 Rajya Sabha elections citing section 62(5) of the Representation of People's Act to say they are not permitted to vote since they are in prison.
According to the ED, Deshmukh had misused his position as state home minister and collected Rs 4.70 crore from various bars in Mumbai through some police officers. He was arrested in November 2021.
While Malik was arrested by the ED on February 23, 2022 in a money laundering case linked to the activities of fugitive gangster Dawood Ibrahim and his aides.
( With inputs from ANI )
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