New Delhi: The Centre on Wednesday told the Supreme Court that a person who upon his conviction in a criminal case is barred from contesting election can’t be stopped from floating a political party or becoming its office bearer.

If a convicted person cannot contest an election, how can he be at the head of a political party

Pointing out that the office bearer of a political party was not a “representative”, the Centre has told the top court that there was no “connectivity and nexus” between a person barred from contesting election to parliament or the state assembly upon conviction and prohibiting such a person from forming or becoming a member of any political party.

Referring to the 255-page report of the Law Commission, the Goswami Committee and the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution, the government said that in none of these reports there is a suggestion to bar a person from being an office bearer of a political party on grounds of his antecedents.

The Centre said this in its affidavit filed in response to the petition by BJP leader and advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay seeking to bar the convicted politicians from forming a political party or becoming an office bearer of an existing political party.

Telling the court that the appointment of an office bearer of a political party is a matter of “party autonomy”, the Centre has told the court that “It may not be apposite to preclude the Election Commission from registering a political party merely because a particular post holder is not qualified to contest election.”

In the last hearing of the matter on February 12, the top court had asked that if a convicted person can’t contest election then how can he be at the helms of the affairs of a political party and select candidates to contest elections.

“If a convicted person cannot contest an election, how can he be at the head of a political party select candidates to contest elections” a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice A.M. Khanwilkar and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud had observed, saying that this flies in the face of top court’s judgments calling for eliminating corruption.

Asking the Centre to spell out its stand on the issue, the court in its last hearing had said that “what can’t be done directly, can’t be done indirectly”.