What should a person who wins election from two places do?What should be done if an MLA wins the Lok Sabha election?Under which rule can one contest elections from two or three places
In the 18th Lok Sabha elections, there are some elected people who were already members of the Legislative Assembly and they contested the Lok Sabha elections and won. Similarly, Rahul Gandhi is the only leader who contested elections from two places and won both the seats. What do the rules and the Constitution say in both these situations?
Rahul Gandhi won from Wayanad by 3 lakh 64 thousand 422 votes. He got 6 lakh 47 thousand 445 votes. CPI came second on this seat. BJP came third. Whereas, in Rae Bareli of UP, he won by more than 3 lakh votes. Dinesh Pratap Singh came second.
They will have to vacate one of their seats. Because under the Constitution, a person cannot be a member of both the houses of Parliament (or state legislature) or both Parliament and state legislature simultaneously or cannot represent more than one seat in one house. In this election, many leaders have won who are already MLAs.
Question – If someone is already an MLA and gets elected to the Lok Sabha, will he have to leave a seat?
– Yes. If an MLA contests and wins the Lok Sabha election, he has to resign from one House within 14 days from the date of his election. This is clearly mentioned in Article 101(1) of the Constitution and Section 68(1) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951.
The member has to intimate his/her choice in writing to the Secretary, Election Commission of India (ECI) within a period of 14 days, failing which his/her Lok Sabha seat will be deemed vacant at the end of this period.
Under Article 101(2) of the Constitution, if members of state legislative assemblies elected to the Lok Sabha do not vacate a seat within 14 days after informing the Election Commission of India, their Lok Sabha seat will automatically become vacant.
Question – Has it ever happened that an MLA was elected to the Lok Sabha and lost his membership due to not giving information?
– Yes, this has happened once. Late Gurcharan Singh Tohra was elected to the Lok Sabha in 1999 but he did not leave his seat in the Punjab Assembly, then his seat in the Lok Sabha was declared vacant.
Question – But when a member of Rajya Sabha contests the Lok Sabha elections and gets elected, why does a different rule apply?
– If a sitting Rajya Sabha member contests and wins the Lok Sabha election, his seat in the Upper House automatically becomes vacant from the day he is declared elected to the Lok Sabha. The same applies to a Lok Sabha member who contests the Rajya Sabha election.
Question – If a leader is elected from two places, like happened with Rahul Gandhi, then what will he have to do?
– If a leader contests elections from two parliamentary constituencies and is elected from both, he will have to resign from one seat within 14 days of the result being declared. If he does not resign from one seat within 14 days of the result being declared, both his seats will become vacant, so Rahul Gandhi will also have to inform the Election Commission of India about this by June 18. Otherwise, his claim on both the seats will end.
Question – Under which law or provision can a person contest elections from two parliamentary constituencies?
– Under Section 33(7) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, a person can contest elections from two parliamentary constituencies.
Question – Why has the Election Commission been opposing contesting elections on two seats simultaneously?
– For several years, the Election Commission (EC) has been arguing that candidates should be restricted to contesting from only one seat so that public money and resources are not wasted in holding by-elections if a candidate wins both seats, but this has not happened so far.
In July 2004, the chief election commissioner urged the prime minister to amend Section 33(7), otherwise a candidate contesting two seats should bear the cost of a by-election on the seat he decides to vacate in case he wins both seats. It suggested that a candidate should contribute Rs 5 lakh for a by-election on an assembly seat and Rs 10 lakh for a Lok Sabha seat.
Question – Has there ever been a challenge to contest elections from two places simultaneously?
– In 2023, lawyer and BJP member Ashwini Upadhyay filed a petition in the Supreme Court (SC) to declare Section 33(7) of the Representation of the People Act invalid. He argued in the petition that since ‘one person one vote’ is a fundamental principle of our democracy, there should also be ‘one candidate one constituency’. The Supreme Court dismissed the petition, saying it was a matter of legislative policy.
Question – Which leader has contested elections from two seats?
– In 1957, former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee contested elections from three seats of Uttar Pradesh – Mathura, Lucknow and Balrampur. He won from Balrampur on a Jan Sangh ticket. In 1962 too, like in 1991, he contested from two seats.
Naveen Patnaik’s father and founder of Biju Janata Dal (BJD), Biju Patnaik, contested from four assembly and one Lok Sabha seats in Odisha in 1971. This time Naveen Patnaik also contested from two assembly seats in Odisha. In the 1980 Lok Sabha elections, former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi contested from two seats for the first time in her electoral career – Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh and Medak in Andhra Pradesh (now in Telangana), winning both the seats.
She defeated Vijaya Raje Scindia in Rae Bareli and her opponents in Medak included S Jaipal Reddy of the Janata Party and ‘human computer’ Shakuntala Devi. Indira Gandhi then retained Medak, while Arun Nehru won a subsequent by-election in Rae Bareli.
In 1989, former deputy prime minister Devi Lal contested from three seats in three states, Rohtak (Haryana), Sikar (Rajasthan) and Ferozepur (Punjab) and won the first two seats. In 1991, Bahujan Samaj Party’s Mayawati contested from three seats, Bijnor, Bulandshahr and Haridwar but lost all three seats.
In 1999, former Congress president Sonia Gandhi contested from Amethi in Uttar Pradesh and Bellary in Karnataka. She won both seats, but chose to represent Amethi. She defeated veteran Sushma Swaraj in Bellary. In 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi contested the Lok Sabha elections from Vadodara in Gujarat and Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh and won both seats. He retained Varanasi.
Tags: 2024 Lok Sabha Election, Congress, Lok Sabha Election 2024, Raebareli, Rahul Gandhi
FIRST PUBLISHED : June 5, 2024, 05:59 IST