Supreme Court of India, in its judgement dated 10 July 2013 while disposing the

Lily Thomas Lily Thomas (1927 – 10 December 2019) was an Indian lawyer who initiated improvement and change to existing laws by filing petitions in India's highest court and regional courts. Thomas' petitions resulted in changes to laws to prevent convic ...

v. Union of India case (along with Lok Prahari v. Union of India), ruled that any

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members o ...

(MP),

Member of the Legislative Assembly A member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) is a representative elected by the voters of a constituency to a legislative assembly. Most often, the term refers to a subnational assembly such as that of a state, province, or territory of a country. ...

(MLA) or Member of a Legislative Council (MLC) who is

convicted In law, a conviction is the verdict reached by a court of law finding a defendant guilty of a crime. The opposite of a conviction is an acquittal (that is, "not guilty"). In Scotland, there can also be a verdict of " not proven", which is co ...

of a crime and given a minimum of two years' imprisonment, loses membership of the House with immediate effect. This is in contrast to the earlier position, wherein convicted members held on to their seats until they exhausted all judicial remedy in lower, state and supreme court of India. Further, Section 8(4) of the

Representation of the People Act Representation of the People Act is a stock short title used in Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belize, Ghana, Grenada, Guyana, India, Jamaica, Mauritius, Pakistan, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, ...

, which allowed elected representatives three months to appeal their conviction, was declared

unconstitutional Constitutionality is said to be the condition of acting in accordance with an applicable constitution; "Webster On Line" the status of a law, a procedure, or an act's accordance with the laws or set forth in the applicable constitution. When l ...

by the bench of Justice A. K. Patnaik and Justice S. J. Mukhopadhaya.

Resistance from government

In an attempt to overturn this decision, the Representation of the People (Second Amendment and Validation) Bill, 2013, was introduced into the

Rajya Sabha The Rajya Sabha, constitutionally the Council of States, is the upper house of the bicameral Parliament of India. , it has a maximum membership of 245, of which 233 are elected by the legislatures of the states and union territories using si ...

on 30 August by Law Minister

Kapil Sibal Kapil Sibal (born 8 August 1948) is an Indian lawyer and politician. Sibal has represented several high-profile cases in the Supreme Court of India and is widely regarded as one of the famous lawyers of India. He is a Member of Parliament, in Ra ...

; by the proposed amendment, representatives would not be disqualified immediately after conviction. The Indian government also filed a review petition, which the Supreme Court dismissed. On 24 September, a few days before the

fodder scam The Fodder Scam was a corruption scandal that involved the embezzlement of about from the government treasury of the north Indian state of Bihar.

verdict, the government tried to bring the bill into effect as an ordinance. However,

Rahul Gandhi Rahul Gandhi ( ; born 19 June 1970) is an Indian politician and a member of the Indian Parliament, representing the constituency of Wayanad, Kerala in the 17th Lok Sabha. A member of the Indian National Congress, he served as the president o ...

, Vice-President of the

Indian National Congress The Indian National Congress (INC), colloquially the Congress Party but often simply the Congress, is a political party in India with widespread roots. Founded in 1885, it was the first modern nationalist movement to emerge in the British E ...

, made his opinion of the ordinance clear in a press meeting: "It's complete nonsense. It should be torn up and thrown away." Members of opposition parties claimed that Gandhi's comments indicated total confusion within the government, and called for the resignation of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Within 5 days, both the ordinance and the bill were withdrawn on 2 October. On 1 October 2013, Rasheed Masood became the first MP to lose his membership of parliament under the new guidelines, when he was sentenced to four years' imprisonment for cheating, forgery and corruption.

List of elected representatives disqualified after conviction by a court of law

References

{{reflist 2013 in India Supreme Court of India cases * Indian politicians convicted of crimes