The Supreme Court on Friday refused to entertain a writ petition filed by Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj Party, which had challenged the validity of the 2025 Bihar Assembly elections and sought directions for holding fresh polls, even as the Court reiterated that the larger issue of freebies in elections would be examined in appropriate proceedings at a later stage.
Kishor's party had contested 242 of the 243 Assembly seats in the 2025 polls but failed to secure a single seat.
A bench comprising Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi expressed disinclination to entertain the petition under Article 32 of the Constitution. Following the Court’s observations, the petitioner chose to withdraw the plea, with liberty to approach the High Court.
The writ petition had sought a declaration that the addition of beneficiaries and direct cash transfers of Rs 10,000 to women voters under the Mukhyamantri Mahila Rojgar Yojana during the subsistence of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) were illegal and unconstitutional. It is alleged that the scheme, announced just ahead of the elections, amounted to a corrupt electoral practice and vitiated the level playing field.
At the outset, Justice Bagchi questioned the maintainability of the plea, asking under which clause of Section 100 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, an entire election could be set aside. Senior Advocate Chander Uday Singh, appearing for the petitioner, argued that the Supreme Court was already seized of the broader issue of freebies and their impact on free and fair elections in other matters.
"How many votes did you get? Once people reject you, you use the judicial forum to get relief! Somebody should have challenged the scheme itself then. That is not the prayer before us. You just want the election to be declared null and void," the Court said.
Singh contended that Bihar, being a fiscally stressed and highly indebted state, could not have announced a large-scale cash transfer without clear budgetary support while the MCC was in force. He submitted that direct benefit transfers to over Rs 1.56 crore women, allegedly without prior scrutiny and based on limited eligibility conditions, distorted electoral fairness and should be treated as a corrupt practice.
However, the CJI observed that the petition was in the nature of a composite election petition seeking an omnibus order to invalidate the entire Assembly election. Emphasising settled election law, the court noted that allegations of corrupt practices must be raised through individual election petitions against specific candidates and constituencies, rather than by invoking Article 32 to challenge the entire electoral process.
“The appropriate remedy is to file election petitions,” the CJI said, adding that there must be specific pleadings against each returned candidate. He also pointed out that the cash transfer scheme itself had not been directly challenged in the prayer clause and that the principal relief sought was the setting aside of the entire election.
When Singh suggested that the prayers could be segregated to allow the court to examine the freebies issue independently, the bench declined and advised the petitioner to approach the High Court. “The High Court can certainly consider it; it is not a pan-India issue,” the CJI remarked.
Importantly, the Court clarified that its refusal to entertain the Jan Suraaj Party’s plea did not mean that the question of freebies would be ignored. The CJI stated that the Supreme Court was already examining the issue seriously in other pending cases and would consider it in an appropriate factual and legal context. “We would like to go into an apt case,” he said, indicating that the Court did not wish to do so at the instance of a political party that had lost the election and was seeking to invalidate the outcome wholesale.
"We will consider the freebies issue. But we have to see the bona fide also, we cannot look at that at the behest of a party which has just lost. When you come to power, you will do the exact thing," said Justice Surya Kant.
The petition had also sought directions to the Election Commission of India to take action under Article 324 of the Constitution and Section 123 of the Representation of the People Act, which deals with corrupt practices. Additionally, it sought enforcement of the Supreme Court’s earlier directions in S Subramaniam Balaji v. State of Tamil Nadu, including the framing of comprehensive guidelines on freebies and direct benefit transfer schemes, and a minimum cooling-off period, preferably six months, before implementing welfare schemes that could influence elections.
