The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a petition demanding to fix the limit of expenses by political parties and candidates in elections, saying these are matters of legislative policy.
The plea had also sought a direction to all the high courts to decide election petitions within six months and a complete ban on campaigning 48 hours before voting.
A man from Haryana filed a plea with the bench asking for several directives, such as calculating and fixing the maximum amount of money that political parties and candidates can spend, limiting the amount of money that can be spent on articles printed and posted before nominations, and calculating the costs of rallies held during nomination filing.
The petitioner told the bench there was no limit on expenditure by political parties.
Election expenditure successfully curbed: Election Commission
Recently the Election Commission had claimed in the Supreme Court that in the last few years, it has been successful in curbing the excessive election expenditure of political parties.
“That is a matter of legislative change,” the CJI said, adding, “We can’t command Parliament that you shall enact a law on this subject”.
However, even after this, there was no limit on expenditure in assembly elections. The candidates spent a lot of money on election campaigns. The Election Commission had set rules for the expenditure of candidates in Rajasthan, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, and Chhattisgarh.
