Wooing voters on caste, religion no ground to bar party: HC
Law’s limits, democracy’s dilemma
The Allahabad High Court’s Lucknow bench has delivered a blunt reminder about the limits of Indian election law: under the present legal framework, neither a political party nor an individual can be pre-emptively barred from contesting elections merely because they influence voters on the basis of caste or religion.
This is not an endorsement of identity-based politics. It is, instead, a stark admission that our laws are both morally outraged by such practices and structurally ill-equipped to uproot them.
What the High Court has actually said
The division bench of Justices Rajan Roy and A.K. Chaudhary, deciding a PIL originally filed in 2013 against caste-based rallies in Uttar Pradesh, has essentially made four key points:
No legal power for a blanket ban
Section 8A of the Representation of the People Act (RPA), 1951, is the only provision that permits disqualification for electoral malpractice. It deals with corrupt practices post-facto—not a prior, permanent ban on a party or individual.
Election Commission’s hands are tied
The Election Commission of India (ECI) cannot deregister a political party simply because it mobilises voters on caste or religious lines. Supreme Court precedents have held that deregistration is permissible only on narrow, specific grounds (e.g., fraud in registration, non-compliance with basic registration conditions), not because of how the party campaigns.
Limited punitive tools already exist, but they’re narrow
– Under Paragraph 16A of the Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order, 1968, the ECI may suspend or withdraw recognition of a party in certain circumstances.
– But there is no explicit statutory power to permanently bar a party from elections solely for indulging in caste- or religion-based mobilisation.
Only Parliament can change this regime
The Court is emphatic: if India wants a harsher regime—like pre-emptive bans on parties that pander to caste and religious identities—that is a question for the legislature, not the judiciary or the Election Commission.
In the same breath, the bench endorsed the UP government’s 2025 order banning caste-based rallies, and added a broader social observation: any “permanent solution” to narrow-mindedness based on caste and religion will not come through law alone, but through values inculcated in families and the education system.
The uneasy tension with Supreme Court doctrine
The High Court’s reasoning sits in an awkward but telling tension with Supreme Court jurisprudence.
In Abhiram Singh v. C.D. Commachen (2017), a seven-judge bench of the Supreme Court held that:
Seeking votes in the name of religion, caste, race, community or language is a corrupt practice under Section 123(3) of the RPA.
The word “his” in Section 123(3) covers not only the candidate’s identity, but also the voter’s identity and that of any other relevant person.
In theory, this interpretation aimed to push religion and caste out of the electoral arena altogether.
So we now have this paradox:
At the micro level (individual elections), the law says: if you seek votes using caste or religion, your election can be voided for corrupt practice.
At the macro level (party system), the law says: even if a party repeatedly indulges in this practice as a strategy, you cannot deregister or pre-emptively ban it on that ground alone.
The Allahabad High Court has not contradicted the Supreme Court’s ethics. It has exposed the Supreme Court’s limits. Abhiram Singh may criminalise and delegitimise identity-based appeals, but it does not create a machinery to structurally reform or punish political parties as institutions.
Why the judgment is legally correct—and politically damning
On law, the High Court is right. Courts cannot legislate new grounds for deregistration or disqualification out of thin air. Judicial creativity has already stretched election law in India; crossing into outright judicial law-making would be dangerous.
But what the judgment reveals is more troubling:
Our election law is built for an era that no longer exists
The RPA and its surrounding legal architecture assume individual candidates violating rules occasionally—not fully professionalised political parties whose very branding and vote-banks are constructed around caste and communal mobilisation.
We punish the symptom, protect the system
The law punishes “corrupt practice” case by case—if litigated, if proved, if challenged in time—while leaving untouched the structural party strategies that make such practices routine, even “normal”.
The ECI is strong on paper, weak in statute
We like to celebrate the Election Commission as a powerful, independent constitutional body. The High Court bluntly reminds us: without clear statutory authority, the ECI cannot transform political culture—it can only police its margins.
In that sense, the judgment is an indictment—not of the Court’s restraint, but of Parliament’s apathy.
Parliament’s long, convenient silence
There is a revealing pattern here.
The Supreme Court says repeatedly that appeals to religion and caste in elections are corrosive to secular democracy.
The Allahabad High Court now says, equally clearly, that the powers to impose system-level consequences on such behaviour must come from Parliament.
Parliament, dominated by parties that thrive on caste and communal mobilisation, simply does… nothing.
This is not accidental. A serious legislative framework that:
defines repeated, systemic identity-based mobilisation as a ground for deregistration or de-recognition;
strengthens Section 123 to ensure speedier, time-bound adjudication of corrupt practices; and
gives the ECI meaningful investigative and punitive powers against parties as institutions,
would cut directly against the electoral self-interest of most major parties across the spectrum. So we live with a charade:
Courts thunder about secularism.
Election seasons seethe with caste equations and communal dog-whistles.
And the law stays frozen in its selective outrage.
The danger of normalising identity politics
There is a temptation to shrug and say: caste and religion are social realities; politics only reflects society. This is lazy fatalism.
Yes, caste and religion are facts of Indian life. But elevating them into the primary currency of democratic competition is a political choice, not an inevitability. When parties:
frame entire manifestos around specific caste blocs;
openly calculate “caste arithmetic”; and
fan religious polarisation as a turnout strategy,
they are not merely “representing” social cleavages. They are weaponising them.
The High Court is right that law alone cannot cure prejudice. But law can do three essential things it currently does not do well enough:
Raise the cost of identity-based campaigning so high that it becomes electorally risky, not rewarding.
Create party-level accountability, not just candidate-level scapegoating.
Signal a constitutional ethic clearly: representation of disadvantaged groups is legitimate; exploitation of group identity for hatred, division, and exclusion is not.
Today, the cost-benefit calculus for parties is the opposite. The few cases where elections are actually set aside for corrupt practice are statistical outliers compared to the sheer volume of communal and casteist rhetoric that goes unpunished.
What should change: an honest reform agenda
If we take both the Supreme Court’s moral stance and the High Court’s legal realism seriously, the path forward is obvious—if politically inconvenient.
Parliament must:
Amend the RPA to create party-level sanctions
Repeat, proven findings of corrupt practice based on caste/religion by a party’s star campaigners should trigger:
– graded sanctions on that party’s recognition;
– partial suspension of its symbol; or
– temporary disqualification from contesting in specific constituencies or states.
Yes, this will be challenged. But a clear statutory framework gives courts something concrete to interpret, rather than improvising in a vacuum.
Give the ECI sharper investigative teeth
A dedicated, time-bound mechanism within the ECI (or attached to it) to examine complaints of communal or caste-based campaigning, with powers to summon records, call witnesses, and issue interim directions.
Mandatory disposal of such complaints before polling wherever feasible, or at minimum before the next election cycle.
Codify stricter rules on manifestos and speeches
Explicitly bar manifestos and campaign materials from promising benefits only for a religious or caste group, unless clearly grounded in constitutionally recognised categories like “backward classes”, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, etc., and framed in non-exclusionary terms.
Clarify the difference between legitimate affirmative action discourse and sectarian mobilisation.
Link state funding and benefits to compliance
Any future move towards partial state funding of elections, or existing benefits like free airtime and tax exemptions, should be conditional on a clean record with respect to communal and caste-based campaigning.
None of this will magically de-communalise Indian politics. But it will at least stop rewarding its worst tendencies.
Beyond law: the uncomfortable work of social change
The High Court’s observation about families and education is not just boilerplate moralising. It is a warning.
If children grow up watching:
leaders proudly speak as “champions” of only their caste or religion;
television debates that normalise talking of “vote banks” as if communities were mere herds;
and election speeches that reduce complex policy issues to identity pride or fear,
no amount of constitutional text will convince them that citizenship is meant to be individual and equal.
Yet, it is also naive to dump this responsibility entirely on “values” while leaving the incentive structures of politics untouched. Values do not flourish against the grain of a political marketplace that continually pays a premium for division.
Education, media literacy, and civic training must go hand in hand with institutional disincentives for cynical identity politics. To insist on one without the other is to guarantee failure.
A candid conclusion: the Court is not the problem
The Allahabad High Court’s ruling will be criticised by many as “toothless” or “formalistic”. That criticism misses the target.
The judgment does something important: it forces us to confront the gap between our constitutional aspirations and our legislative will. Courts can:
interpret Section 123(3) broadly, as the Supreme Court has;
strike down individual elections;
reiterate, again and again, that elections are a secular exercise.
They cannot, on their own, redesign the rules of the political game.
If Indians are genuinely tired of elections fought as caste censuses and communal referendums, the demand must be directed not merely at judges and the Election Commission, but at Parliament—and, ultimately, at the parties we keep returning to power.
The High Court has reminded us, in effect: Do not ask judges to save democracy from the very choices voters keep making, under laws Parliament refuses to reform.
That reminder may be unsatisfying. It is also brutally honest. And it places the responsibility exactly where it belongs: on legislators who benefit from the status quo, and on citizens who tolerate it.
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