Sita Soren v Union of India

Facts

• The appellant was a member of the Jharkhand Legislative Assembly.
• It was alleged that she had accepted illegal gratification in order to vote for a particular candidate in an election to the Council of States.
• In the event she did not vote for that candidate.
• She was prosecuted, and claimed immunity under Art.194(2) on the ground that the alleged act related to a vote given by her in the House.
• She relied on the majority in P V Narasimha Rao v State (1998), in which members who had accepted bribes to vote against a motion of no confidence, and had so voted, were held immune, while a member who had taken the money and abstained was held not to be.
• Given the anomaly this produced, the matter was placed before a Bench of seven Judges.

Issue

1. Whether a legislator who accepts a bribe in connection with a speech or a vote in the House enjoys immunity under Art.105(2) or Art.194(2).

Held

• P V Narasimha Rao was overruled and immunity was denied. The Court held that the privilege exists to enable a legislator to perform his functions without fear of legal consequence, and its scope is accordingly limited to acts having an essential connection with the discharge of those functions. Accepting money to vote in a particular way is not an act necessary to voting; it is a corruption of the very function the privilege protects. Further, the offence is constituted by the agreement and the acceptance, so it is complete before any speech is made or any vote cast, and cannot be characterised as a proceeding in respect of anything said or any vote given. The Court noted that the earlier view produced the perverse result that the legislator who honoured a corrupt bargain escaped while the one who did not was prosecuted.

Ratio Decidendi

Privilege is functional, not personal. It is conferred to protect the independence and dignity of the legislature, and a claim to immunity must be tested by asking whether the act in question is one the legislature must be free to perform without external interference. Bribery is destructive of that independence rather than an exercise of it, and to immunise it would be to use a protective provision to defeat the purpose for which it exists. Since the criminal liability attaches at the point of acceptance, the connection with any subsequent parliamentary act is in any event severed.