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New Delhi: On April 16,  Justices J.B. Pardiwala and K.V. Viswanathan disposed of a contempt petition filed by the NGO Lok Prahari. The bench held that there was no wilful disobedience of the February 16, 2018 directions in Lok Prahari v. Union of India.

The 2018 judgment was delivered by a bench of Justices Jasti Chelameswar and S. Abdul Nazeer. It granted several reliefs sought by the petitioner society, whose membership comes largely from retired civil servants.

Most consequentially, it declared non-disclosure of candidates’ assets and income-sources to be “undue influence” under Section 123(2) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951. The declaration extends to the assets of the candidate’s spouse and dependants. It made such non-disclosure a corrupt practice.

The judgment also directed amendment of Form 26 under the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961. Critically, it mandated a permanent mechanism to monitor undue asset-accretion by sitting legislators and their associates.

Eight years later, the permanent mechanism does not exist.

What the Union government told the court

Additional solicitor general K.M. Nataraj appeared for Rajiv Mani, secretary in the Legislative Department of the Union Law Ministry. He placed on record a reply tracing his Department’s February 2026 correspondence with the Lok Sabha Secretariat.

The Secretariat’s February 11, 2026 response reiterated its long-held objections to any legislated monitoring arrangement. Three strands of reasoning were offered.

First, it argued that a dedicated cell within either House Secretariat would be “not feasible and legally untenable”. That proposal had once been floated by the then attorney general. The Secretariat now cited parliamentary practice and the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013 as grounds for resisting it.

Second, it contended that Union ministers who are also MPs cannot by convention be summoned before parliamentary committees. A Secretariat-led inquiry against them would breach long-standing House practice.

Third, it asserted that the Lokpal is the dedicated institution for investigating disproportionate-asset complaints against Ministers, MPs and other public servants. The Lokpal became operational only in March 2019. A parallel House committee, the Secretariat said, would encroach on its jurisdiction.

The Department’s own stand was that the 2018 judgment contained no direction on it “to make a law”. It added that the subject fell outside its administrative remit.

Its alternative argument relied on recent proceedings before the Allahabad high vourt at Lucknow. Lok Prahari had filed a separate PIL there against the Election Commission of India. On August 11, 2025, Justices Rajan Roy and Manjive Shukla delivered an observation in that case. Prima facie, they held, the ECI was the statutory body obliged to place asset-verification reports in the public domain. Those reports are forwarded to the ECI by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT).

That matter was not disposed. The Union, through the Home Ministry, was impleaded and directed to file an affidavit.

On this scaffolding, the Union government persuaded the Supreme Court that a “joint framework already exists” between the ECI and the CBDT. No legislative intervention, therefore, was required.

The bench recorded the Union government’s reply and found “no contempt, as alleged”.

Why the disposal matters

As a matter of contempt jurisprudence, the order is unobjectionable. Wilful disobedience is a high bar under Section 2(b) of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971. The Union government’s reply, however circular in substance, situated the non-implementation within a discursive field of parliamentary practice, statutory overlap and executive consultation. A court applying the “wilfulness” standard could hardly have gone further.

It is the collateral consequence that unsettles.

The 2018 judgment had itself been modest. It refused Lok Prahari’s prayer for a one-time investigation of named legislators, calling that “selective witch-hunting”. It also declined to direct Parliament to amend the 1951 Act.

In place of those reliefs, it offered a directive to the Union to create a standing mechanism of oversight. That machinery was the last line of the 2018 jurisprudential defence. Its non-existence means that the judgment’s core reform is now a declaration without a vehicle.

The Lokpal argument, examined

The Secretariat’s reliance on the Lokpal is, as a matter of legal form, available. The submission nevertheless glosses over two facts.

First, the Lokpal’s jurisdiction is confined to Union public servants. That category excludes MLAs and Members of Legislative Councils, who were specifically named in the 2018 mandate. Second, the Lokpal’s record of proactive asset-monitoring over its first seven years is threadbare. It has not positioned itself as the continuous-monitoring body that the 2018 bench envisaged.

Form 26 was amended in 2019. Candidates must now disclose sources of income, offshore assets, and five years of income-tax returns for themselves and their associates. That is partial compliance with one limb of the 2018 directions. It does not address the monitoring limb.

The structural question

A court that once carved out an Article 19(1)(a) voter’s right to information now finds itself unable to enforce its own follow-through directives. That line of cases began with Association for Democratic Reforms in 2002. The Union government now answers with institutional excuses.

The contempt disposal does not embarrass the doctrine. It does drain it.

What the petitioner’s alternative forum, the Allahabad high court, will do with its still-pending PIL remains the only live remedy. The Supreme Court has accepted that it cannot, eight years on, compel the creation of the body it once said democracy required.

© The Wire