Is there no legal ban on an Independent seeking election to the House of Commons?
No. Even here, only candidates of political parties are supplied with electoral rolls, not Independents. Some of them went to court, but lost. The law distinguishes between recognised political parties and Independents. The Dinesh Goswami Committee on Electoral Reforms, of which I was a member, had sought the opinion of the Law Ministry on whether such a distinction was possible to contain non-serious contestants. The legal fraternity favoured this. We made such a recommendation. So the implementation of the Goswami committee report could be a starting point.
