Presently, a proposal has been sent by the Election Commission to the Union Law Ministry that a candidate should be banned from contesting from more than two seats. If I talk about the constitutional provision in this regard, Parliament has the right to make laws regarding the contesting of a candidate from more than one place in the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections.
Parliament has also passed 3 laws in this regard-
(1) Representation of the People Act, 1950
(2) Representation of the People Act, 1951
(3) The Delimitation Commission Act, 1952
Section 33(7) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 permits any candidate to contest elections from more than one place. Earlier an election candidate could contest from more than two places. After the amendment of the year 1996, only one candidate can contest from two places. Section 70 of the same Act provides that, in one constituency, a candidate cannot represent two constituencies at the same time. That is, after winning the election, the elected candidate will have to give up / vacate one of the two seats won.
Now the question arises that why a candidate contests from more than one place?
(1) When a candidates are afraid of defeat he chooses more than one place to contest the election.
(2) A candidate wants to show that his area of influence is not limited but is in many places.
(3) From where a candidate contests, he also influences the seats around that place.
Damage to the country due to candidates contesting from more than one place
(1) This leads to a lot of wastage of resource in country.
(2) The seat vacated by the candidates remains unrepresented for six months. This causes injustice to the people of that area.
(3) It is often seen that in the by-elections, only the candidates of the ruling party win. This also hurts the very spirit of democracy in country.
The recent proposals made in this regard by the Election Commission-
(1) The Election Commission has asked the Union Law Ministry to limit the provision of section 33(7) of the Representation of the People Act to allow a candidate to contest elections from one place.
(2) If the winning candidates vacates one seat, the expenses of the bye-election to be held on the vacant seat shall be borne by the candidate. This will also create a kind of fear among the candidates so that the election candidate will think before contesting from more than one place.
(3) The Election Commission has suggested that if a candidate vacates a seat after winning the election then the candidate who comes second on that seat should be declared the winner