A Supreme Court decision issued Friday allows private citizens to lodge criminal complaints under the Representation of the People Act against election candidates who provide false or incomplete information in their nomination affidavits.
The two-judge panel of Justices Dipankar Datta and Sheel Nagu noted that Section 195 of the Code of Criminal Procedure places a procedural bar on certain complaints — one that would not block filings of this nature from moving forward. Section 195 of the CrPC bars criminal courts from taking direct cognisance of certain specified offences in the absence of a written complaint formally lodged by the authorised public servant or the court in question.
The bench determined that a private complaint alleging an offence under Section 125A of the Representation of the People Act is not required to satisfy the procedural threshold set out under Section 195 of the CrPC, departing from the position the High Court had taken. The ruling also determined that nothing elsewhere in the statute bars private individuals from lodging such complaints, and that the wording of Section 125A of the Representation of the People Act reinforced the position that such a filing by a non-official party was permissible under the law.
Under Section 125A of the Representation of the People Act, any candidate who submits false details, withholds required information, or leaves out compulsory disclosures from nomination papers or affidavits faces legal penalties. The bench noted that where a complaint against a winning candidate is motivated by harassment or rests on groundless allegations, the legal framework already vests competent magistrates with the authority to issue whatever orders the facts of a given case warrant.
The decision arose from Rajkumar Madki's appeal against a Karnataka High Court order dated 7 March 2025, which had set aside his criminal complaint targeting Shailendra Beldale, who holds a seat in the Karnataka Legislative Assembly representing the Bidar constituency. Madki had claimed that Beldale's nomination paperwork for the 2023 assembly election contained an affidavit bearing a false declaration about the candidate's residential address.
A private complaint invoking Section 200 of the CrPC had been placed before the Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate in Bengaluru, pointing to an alleged violation falling under Section 125A of the Representation of the People Act. The Karnataka High Court set aside the complaint on the ground that any prosecution for the alleged offence could be set in motion only on a complaint filed by the Election Commission, leaving an aggrieved voter with the avenue of an election petition rather than a private criminal complaint. That judgment further held that the legislature's addition of Section 125A to the Representation of the People Act four years prior was presumed to have been made with full awareness, and that the absence of Section 125A from the scope of Section 195 of the Code of Criminal Procedure had to be read as a deliberate legislative choice.
Though the Supreme Court's decision confirmed that privately initiated complaints of this nature are legally valid, it did not go so far as to reinstate the proceedings against Beldale.
