Legal Hurdles May Prevent Sanjay Dutt From Contesting

Legal Hurdles May Prevent Sanjay Dutt From Contesting 8 Jan 2009, 2103 hrs IST, TNN Mumbai: Sanjay Dutt's joy at the Samajwadi Party nomination may be shortlived. A quick double-check with his legal counsel would have told that his current position did not enable him to contest the Lok Sabha election. ( Watch ) Ace defence counsel V R Manohar, who represented the actor in the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts case, said: "His nomination will be rejected and he cannot contest unless the Supreme Court stays the conviction and suspends the sentence." But Dutt, who is out on merely on bail following his conviction in the blasts case, has not even initiated any step to get his conviction stayed by the Supreme Court. So his conviction stands and he is merely out on bail after getting three years' rigorous imprisonment. There is another hitch. The apex court may be less likely to suspend Dutt's conviction and sentence pending his appeal because -- despite his name being cleared of terror charges -- it is the blasts case that he is connected with, say legal experts. "Dutt's acquittal under the more stringent Tada may not be his ticket to contest if that and his release on bail are what he is banking on," Mumbai-based advocate Hitesh Jain, now representing an accused in the Malegaon blasts case, said. One near-parallel that comes to mind is cricketer-turned-politician Navjyot Singh Siddhu's case. He had to give up his Lok Sabha membership after the Punjab and Haryana High Court set aside his acquittal on charges of culpable homicide not amounting to murder. He then appealed in the Supreme Court against his conviction and made a specific plea for staying his conviction to enable him to contest in the bypolls. The SC, just a day before the deadline for filing his nomination in 2006, stayed Siddhu's conviction in the road rage case and ensured that he could contest the Amritsar Lok Sabha bypoll. What the law says Under the Representation of the People Act, anyone sentenced to more than two years' imprisonment is barred from contesting elections till a court of law stays the conviction and sentence

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