People with 'heinous' criminal cases against them should be debarred from elections: Ex-CEC

Former chief election commissioner S Y Quraishi today suggested that people with "heinous" criminal cases against them should be debarred from fighting elections.

Quraishi, who was the CEC from 2010-12, said it was high time that long-pending electoral reforms were carried out in the country.

There were 40 pending proposals for electoral reforms, he said while speaking during a panel discussion at the launch of Congress leader and former Union minister M Veerappa Moily's book 'The Wheel of Justice'.

Quraishi, while talking about three such reforms, said criminalisation of politics must be dealt with strongly.

He said there had been a proposal that people who had criminal cases pending against them should be debarred from fighting polls, but a concern that was raised was that there may be false cases and political cases.

"The answer is that only heinous cases such as rape, dacoity, murder and kidnapping which will lead to five year imprisonment and where a court of law has framed the charges (should be the benchmark for debarring a person)," he said