A view of the Supreme Court of India in New Delhi. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters
The Supreme Court made it clear on Monday (November 2, 2026) that electoral authorities neither hold a monopoly over voter awareness campaigns nor can they assume political partisanship on the part of activists engaged with local communities to promote electoral participation.
A Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant set aside an order passed by the Rajasthan State Election Commission (SEC) refusing civil society groups permission to reach out to voters ahead of panchayat elections in the State.
The SEC voiced suspicions that activists were acting “on the behest of someone else”. The counsel said the SEC was already doing voter awareness campaigns on its own.
“Your conducting it does not mean no other authority can do voter awareness campaigns. In case they [civil society groups] are doing any corrupt practices, you can regulate. But you cannot monopolise the voter awareness exercises,” Justice Joymalya Bagchi, part of the three-judge Bench,observed.
Appearing for petitioner-activists like Aruna Roy, advocate Prashant Bhushan submitted that the initiative on the part of the civil society groups was undertaken in sheer public interest, only to be faced with prohibitive orders under Section 163 BNSS in the State.
“We are not more than 20 people. They should not be imposing Section 163 ahead of elections unless there is breach of peace. But this is a blanket ban on us when all we do is tell voters to not take bribes as it would come back to haunt them. We tell them that they should participate in the Panchayat Raj elections in a free, fair and honourable manner,” Mr. Bhushan submitted.
He said the next phase of the election was due on November 14-15. The senior counsel said the petitioners had twice requested the SEC for permission to conduct these campaigns, and had been blankly refused.
“Denying permission on the ground that elections are due, imposing Section 163… it is ridiculous. Voter awareness campaigns are specifically designed to make people aware of core facts like that they can exercise NOTA, and they should not take money, etc,” Mr. Bhushan reiterated.
Published – November 02, 2026 06:27 pm IST
