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Yet another legislative insufficiency surrounding s. 9A
of the Act needs to be highlighted. This provision, as has
been explained earlier by my learned brother, disqualifies a
person from being a candidate if there subsists a contract
entered into by him in the course of his trade or business
with the appropriate government for the supply of goods to,
or for the execution of any works undertaken by, that gov-
ernment. It is followed by an Explanation which is more or
less a legal fiction. The rugged edges of ambiguity of s. 9A
especially as to how long and in what sense can a contract
be said to be subsisting envelop the disbarment provision
with subtle legal questions. The common man of India is
the .potential candidate and is he to risk his candidature
en the niceties of the law of contracts ? In this context we
must remember that the vast and various developmental works
undertaken by the State and its subsidiaries and executed
by a large number of little construction contractors made it
very desirable that the disqualificatory net should not be
cast too wide to disfranchise innumerable persons and must
be easy of ascertainment if uncertainty is not to overhang
elections in our political system. In this very case sever-
al problems were mooted, somewhat difficult to answer. How
long does a contract subsist ? Is every liability arising on
a breach of contract, a claim under the contract attracting
the lethal coils of s. 9A ? If government money is involved
in the execution of the work. does the contract necessarily
become one with government ? A host of other questions may
mystify the legal imports of the taboo s. 9A sets out and
yet every lay man is imperilled by this vague provision in
the exercise of his electoral right. Such a brooding fear
and haunting provisions is counter productive and may per-
haps have to be redrafted in the light of experience in
court. These are problems not of high-sounding law but
affecting the common man in the exercise of his most demo-
cratic right. Nietzche once said: ,The great problems are in
the streets. The inaugural error in the drawing up of our
election law, as is illustrated by this
case, is that sophisticated provisions amenable to logico-
linguistic feats or subtle interpretation of civil law ill
suit a regulatory area of the political process where the
small individual offers himself for electoral contest. I
choose to make these observations and draw the attention of
the concerned instrumentalities only because in my humble
view the court has an activist role to tell the nation,
through its judgment or other designated channels where the
law misfires, or how the law stands in need of reform. This
case therefore induces me to make what may be regarded as
obiter: