Can't club punishments to disqualify lawmakers: SC

A lawmaker cannot be disqualified on being sentenced to prison for less than two years, the Supreme Court said on Thursday, clarifying that jail terms under different offences cannot be clubbed together to bring a case under statutory debarment.

- Utkarsh Anand

The Representation of the People (RP) Act, 1951, provides that legislators sentenced to a jail term of two years or more are disqualified from Parliament and state assemblies from the date of the conviction till a period of six years after their release.

According to a bench of justices Surya Kant and Dipankar Datta, the language used in the RP Act is clear -- a person convicted of "any offence" and sentenced to imprisonment for not less than two years shall be disqualified.

"So, it first provides for two conditions conviction in an 'any offfence' and a jail term of at least two years. The term used in the provision is 'offence' and not 'offences'. We cannot read it beyond the language of the Act," the bench told advocate Ravindra Adsure.