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“19. Yet another legislative insufficiency surrounding Section
9-A 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 government. It is
followed by an explanation which is more or less a legal fiction.
The rugged edges of ambiguity of Section 9-A 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 on 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 make 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 several 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 Section 9-A? 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 import of the taboo Section 9-A
sets out and yet every layman is imperilled by this vague
provision in the exercise of his electoral right. Such a brooding
fear and haunting provision is counter-productive and may
perhaps 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 democratic right.
Nietzsche 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: