New Delhi: The Supreme Court has said that free and fair election is a basic structure of the Constitution, and while constitutional courts would not ordinarily interfere with the election process, their hands are not tied when intervention is necessary, reported LiveLaw.A bench of Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V. Mohana made the remarks on Wednesday (October 21) while granting interim relief to the Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP), the principal opposition party in Andhra Pradesh.YSRCP had moved the Supreme Court on Tuesday (October 20) alleging that violence during the filing of nominations for Andhra Pradesh’s urban local body elections obstructed its candidates from participation. The move came shortly after the Andhra Pradesh high court refused the YSRCP’s plea to extend the deadline for filing nominations.“Free and fair elections are a basic structure of the Constitution. Right to freely participate in such election by filing nomination papers without hindrance is a facet of the free and fair election process,” the court observed.“The power of the constitutional Courts to exercise judicial review, though deferential in election matters, cannot be said to be wholly negated when the discharge of such constitutional duty of the State Election Commission is hampered due to widespread violence impairing peace and tranquility and thereby skewing a level playing field in filing nominations,” the bench added.The court noted that the philosophy of judicial deference to the control and superintendence of elections by the Election Commission has grown from a doctrine of necessity that the election process which is entrusted in the hands of an independent constitutional authority be permitted to be concluded within a prescribed timeline and not be mired in the quagmire of intermediate judicial interference.“These authorities above unequivocally state while constitutional courts would ordinarily not interfere with election process, but their hands are not tied when appropriate interventions are necessary to ensure that elections are conducted in a free and fair manner and are not marred by extraconstitutional or illegal means, for eg. muscle power,” said the top court, while citing to precedents such as Union Territory of Ladakh and Others VS. Jammu and Kashmir National Conference (2024), Bharatiya Janata Party, West Bengal v. State of West Bengal and others (2018), reported LiveLaw.The Supreme Court’s observations comes at a time when a batch of petitions have been filed by Lok Sabha leader of opposition Rahul Gandhi and other opposition leaders challenging the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise of the Election Commission of India (ECI).The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Union government has presently unleashed a brutal crackdown on peaceful protesters demanding the resignation of CEC Kumar over the SIR, which has disenfranchised more than 13 crore people in the country whose names have been deleted from electoral rolls.Among other things, the petition seeks the suspension of the SIR exercise across all states pending adjudication of the petition