SC agrees to hear a plea for standard format for election manifestos

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Union Home Minister Amit Shah releasing the BJP's manifesto for the upcoming West Bengal Assembly elections 2026 in Kolkata. | Photo Credit: R.V. Moorthy

The Supreme Court agreed on Wednesday (September 16, 2026) to list for hearing a plea seeking a standard format for election manifestos of political parties so that their intentions and views on issues are clear to voters.

In an oral mentioning before a Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, petitioner-advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay said even the Supreme Court and the State High Courts have highly structured layouts in the form of causelists designed to inform advocates, litigating parties, and court officials of the daily scheduling of cases.

On the other hand, the format of election manifestos were left to the discretion of individual political parties, he said.

Mr. Upadhyay said the Election Commission of India (ECI) must consider a uniform format for manifestos.

“We will list this petition,” Chief Justice Kant said.

Mr. Upadhyay has argued that an election manifesto was a “vision document, a published declaration of the intentions, motives and views of the political party”.

“Hence, it is statutory and legally enforceable,” he has submitted.

In a 2022 petition, the petitioner-advocate had sought a direction to the Ministry of Law and Justice to take appropriate steps to make political parties accountable for essential rational manifesto promises, or, in the alternate, direct the ECI to use its plenary constitutional power to frame guidelines to fix liability on parties on their manifesto promises.

Mr. Upadhyay, in that petition, had even sought a direction from the court to the EC to seize the election symbol and derecognise/deregister political parties which fail to fulfil their essential rational promises made in their election manifestos.

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