The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that election candidates are not required to disclose every minute detail of their assets unless they are of a “substantial” value.

“Non-disclosure of each and every asset owned by a candidate would not amount to a defect, much less, a defect of a substantial character.

“It is not necessary that a candidate declare every item of movable property that he or his dependent family members owns, such as clothing, shoes, crockery, stationery and furniture, etc, unless the same is of such value as to constitute a sizeable asset in itself
or reflect upon his candidature, in terms of his lifestyle, and require to be disclosed,” a bench of Justices Aniruddha Bose and Sanjay Kumar said.

The bench made the observation while upholding the election of Independent MLA Karikho Kri from the Tezu Assembly constituency in Arunachal Pradesh in 2019.

Kri won the 2019 Assembly elections as an Independent by defeating BJP’s Mohesh Chai and Congress’s Nuney Tayang. However, Gauhati High Court had last year set aside his election on a petition filed by Tayang alleging non-disclosure of assets in the form of vehicles and dues owed by Kri to the government.

Aggrieved, Kri had filed the appeal.

Allowing the appeal, the Supreme Court bench said: “Though it has been strenuously contended before us that the voter’s ‘right to know’ is absolute and a candidate contesting the election must be forthright about all his particulars, we are not inclined to accept the blanket proposition that a candidate is required to lay his life out threadbare for examination by the electorate.”