Patna: The Supreme Court today issued a notice to the Election Commission on a petition seeking the disqualification of Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s House membership for allegedly concealing a pending murder case against him in his poll affidavit. The poll panel has four weeks to submit its response to India’s top court.

An apex court bench headed by chief justice Dipak Misra passed the order today while hearing the criminal petition filed by lawyer M.L. Sharma.

Kumar, who currently heads the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in Bihar, is a Member of Bihar Legislative Council, the Upper House of the state legislature. He has not faced voters since becoming chief minister in 2005.

“It’s up to the Election Commission to see. They will do whatever they think proper,” Kumar told the media on Monday while reacting to the Supreme Court order.

In his petition, Sharma alleged the chief minister is accused of murdering a Congress leader, Sitaram Singh, during the 1991 Lok Sabha by-election for the Barh seat that he won as a Janata Dal candidate. The seat falls under Patna district. The case has been pending for the past 26 years but has only now been brought before the Supreme Court in what many see as a huge setback for the chief minister.

Sharma in his petition has further alleged that the chief minister never applied for bail in this non-bailable offence and used his official position to get a closure report filed by the police.

“First, he continued [in] the post despite facing such a serious criminal charge. At least he must have taken bail but he went on without it. And secondly, he kept the Election Commission in the dark about his past precedent,” was how the petitioner phrased his charges.

Seeking a fresh investigation into the case, the petition has also urged the court to make a general declaration that anyone facing a criminal offence must be barred from holding constitutional office. Sharma filed the petition last month.

The revelation about Kumar’s pending case came to light after Rashtriya Janata Dal president Lalu Prasad Yadav released a document to the media in July shortly after the Bihar chief minister broke away from the erstwhile ruling Grand Alliance to form a government with rival Bharatiya Janata Party against which he had won elections.