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Candidate has a right to privacy, need not disclose every belonging unless substantial: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court on April 9, 2024, held that candidates can retain their right to privacy and need not lay out every scrap of his personal life and possession, past and present, for the voter to rifle through.

“It is not necessary that a candidate declare every item of moveable property that he or his dependent family members owns such as clothing, shoes, crockery, stationery, furniture etc,” a Bench of Justices Aniruddha Bose and Sanjay Kumar observed in a judgment.

Justice Kumar said only a “substantial” asset, which may give an inkling to the voter about the affluence of a candidate, need to be disclosed. The judgment came in a petition filed by Arunachal Pradesh MLA Karikho Kri challenging a Gauhati High Court decision in July last year declaring his election to the 44-Tezu Assembly Constituency of Arunachal Pradesh void for not declaring three vehicles as his assets.

Kri had won the elections on May 23, 2019 as an independent candidate. The vehicles in question were a Kinetic Zing scooter, a Maruti Omni van used as an ambulance, and a TVS Star City motorcycle. The scooter was sold as scrap in 2009. The other two vehicles were also sold. The High Court did not examine the statements of the buyers.

Ruling in favour of Kri, the Supreme Court noted his argument that none of the sold vehicles could be considered as “assets in his hands”. Besides, the judgment authored by a Bench of Justice Kumar said the non-disclosure has to be of a “substantial nature” under Section 36 (4) of the Representation of People Act.

Holding a candidate’s election void on the basis of non-disclosure of three vehicles, one of which was sold as scrap was “meaningless, futile, and otiose akin to wasting ink on paper insofar as the legislative exercise is concerned”.

Besides, Kri had pointed out that his declared assets and that of his wife and sons were worth ₹8,41,33,815 cumulatively. Their total income was cumulatively worth ₹11,72,91,634. The alleged non-disclosure of the vehicles account for less than 0.1% of the cumulative total of the income and the assets declared.

“Therefore, even assuming that the said vehicles were assets and thus suffering from the vice of nondisclosure, even then the non-disclosure could not have been treated as substantial,” Kri’s lawyer Gautam Talukdar had argued.