Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Aug 3: The Supreme Court stated on Wednesday that there needs to be a commission set up to look into the ‘severe economic issue’ of political parties proposing to hand out freebies during election campaigns.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the government and opposition parties, and other stakeholders should form an apex body to submit recommendations on how to regulate freebies given out by political parties, according to a bench of Chief Justice NV Ramana, Justices Krishna Murari, and Hima Kohli.
“All stakeholders who want the freebies and who are opposing it, including RBI, NITI Aayog, opposition parties have to be involved in this process of making some constructive suggestion,” the bench said.
It requested proposals on the make-up of an expert panel that will look into how to control freebies and submit a report to it from the Centre, Election Commission, senior attorney and Rajya Sabha MP Kapil Sibal, and the petitioners. The suggestions have to be submitted within seven days.
Speaking on behalf of the Central government, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta backed the suit opposing freebies promised by political parties and warned that if this trend continues, the economy will collapse.
“These populist promises have an adverse effect on voters. This is how we head towards economic disasters,” Mehta said.
A petition asking for guidance to take electoral emblems and deregister political parties that pledged to give out nonsensical freebies from public monies was being heard by the Supreme Court. It requested last week that the central government take a stance on the need to control the issue of political parties pledging to give out illogical freebies during election campaigns using public monies.
It had requested that the Center investigate the possibility of using the Finance Commission’s recommendations as a starting point. Senior attorney Kapil Sibal, who was in court for another matter, was consulted by the CJI over freebies given out by political parties.
