The Supreme Court on Friday refused to entertain the petition by Jan Suraaj Party founded by political strategist Prashant Kishor alleging misuse of a state welfare scheme to influence voters ahead of the 2025 Bihar Assembly elections.
A Bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi pulled up the party for trying to use judicial forum to secure relief after having lost the polls.Kishor's party had contested 242 of the 243 Assembly seats in the 2025 polls but failed to secure a single seat."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.Pertinently, the Court said that the High Court is the appropriate forum to decide the matter.
"Since it deals with only one State, please go to that High Court. In some cases, there is a serious issue of freebies which we will seriously examine,"Senior Advocate CU Singh, appearing for Jan Suraaj Party, said that the scheme under which the payment was made to voters, was announced just before the polls and the payments were made when the model code of conduct was in force.
"Direct transfer scheme is different. This is about women self help groups," the CJI replied.The Court said that while it will examine the issue of freebies, it will also have to see the bonafides of the petitioner."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 petitioner eventually withdrew the plea.Once people reject you, you use the judicial forum to get relief, he added.
At the heart of the party's challenge before the Supreme Court was the scheme launched by the Nitish-led Bihar government just before the elections - the Mukhyamantri Mahila Rojgar Yojana. Under the scheme, the State decided to transfer ₹10,000 directly to one woman in every family to help her start self-employment, with a further promise of ₹2 lakh after assessment.The Jan Suraaj party alleged that while around one crore women were already associated with JEEVIKA before the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) came into force, newspaper reports later showed that 1.56 crore women eventually received payments.
The petition argued that releasing cash benefits during this period amounted to “corrupt practices” meant to unduly influence voters in favour of the ruling government.The plea claimed that this deprived other political parties of a level playing field and struck at the core requirement of free and fair elections.The plea also flagged the role of the Election Commission of India. It alleged that women, who were beneficiaries of the scheme, were deployed at polling booths on voting days in both phases of polling, even though many of them had already received the cash benefit.
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