The apex court said that voters have fundamental right to know about their candidates and leaving columns blank in the nomination paper amounts to violation of their right.
A bench headed by Chief Justice P Sathasivam said that the power of returning officer for rejecting nomination papers must be exercised.
The court passed the judgement on a PIL filed in 2008 by NGO Resurgence India, a civil rights group, which detected a trend among candidates of leaving blank the columns demanding critical information about them.
The Election Commission had supported the NGO's plea that no column should be allowed to be left blank which tantamounts to concealing information and not filing complete affidavit.
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It had also taken a stand that the returning officer should be empowered to reject the nomination papers of a candidate who provides incomplete information by leaving some columns blank in the affidavit.
Centre's counsel, however, had said the right to contest election is a statutory one and there is a judgement of the three-judge bench of the apex court that even for concealing the information, the nomination papers cannot be rejected.
However, instances are there when candidates prefer to leave the column vacant, the NGO had said.