NEW DELHI: Turning the spotlight on criminal-politicians that will leave them squirming, the Supreme Court on Thursday said it will put the focus back on a PIL's main plea to impose life ban on elected representatives and politicians once they are convicted in a criminal case.

On a PIL filed by advocate Ashwini Upadhyay, the SC's attempt till date was to fast track pending criminal cases against politicians, MPs and MLAs and this resulted in the Centre funding the establishment of 12 special courts to exclusively take up such cases on a day-to-day basis. The court has also appointed senior advocate Vijay Hansaria as amicus to assist the court.

On Thursday, a bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Uday U Lalit and K M Joseph took the PIL petitioner by surprise by asking what his main prayer was before the court. After some fumbles, Upadhyay said that it was to impose a life ban on convicted politicians from contesting elections.

Upadhyay said he had also prayed for declaring as unconstitutional Section 8 of Representation of the People Act, which imposed a six-year ban on contesting elections on politicians on serving out a sentence of two or more years in jail on being convicted in a criminal case. The CJI-led bench said, "The prayer in the petition is that if a government servant or a judicial officer is sacked from the job on conviction in a criminal case, why should the same yardstick be not applied to politicians and ban them from contesting elections altogether after conviction in a criminal case?

"We (the court) should not lose track of the main prayer. We must not lose sight of lifetime ban on contesting elections on convicted politicians. We had side-tracked into fast-tracking of trial in criminal cases pending against politicians. We would like to come back to the main theme of the PIL." It decided to hear the Centre and the petitioner on December 4.

Hansaria said 12 special courts were woefully inadequate to try more than 3,000 cases pending against politicians, some since 2007, and that there should be at least 70 more magisterial and sessions courts to fast track trials.

