One incredibly thin line

Recently Supreme Court disqualified election of P.C. Thomas for appealing on ground of religion.

Eminent libertarian (henceforth to be called E.L.) questioned the decision, arguing voters have freedom to cast their voters on any criteria, including religion.Rohit disagreed.

Now I admit, I find voting on religious lines an entirely avoidable exercise and importantly I find such tactics damaging to society.
However even though I am horrified by the prospect, I can not but agree with E.L.,

Three reasons:
First, ultimately the responsibility of merit of legislature in a democracy lies on the choices of electorate, so is the responsibility of the consequences of that choice. It is upto public to realize, the folly of such propoganda, and not the duty of state to protect it from its own mistakes.

Second, it is arbitrary to hold religion as a sole ground of dismissal. Why, one may ask, is caste not a ground for dismissal considering the havoc casteism has wreaked upon India in present and in past. Or for that matter even gender.

Third, how does one draw the line? It is not for sake of rhetoric, it is simply impossible to decide what is permissible and what is not, in case of something as fuzzy as appealing on grounds of religion. I am hardly a freedom fanatic but considering the circumstances I doubt it is advisable to micro manage the electoral choices.

PS. Rohit has commented that appealing on grounds of religion is equivalent to inciting violence. Unless you are specifically asking for Jihad, I am not sure I understand the reasoning.

PPS. One may argue, on the basis of principles above even criminals should be allowed to contest elections. I have no objection to this on the “above” grounds.
As some one remarked, democracy is the means to ensure that public gets what it wants and it gets it good and hard. I concur with this.
However my grounds to objection over criminals participation in elections are different, by barring them we are punishing the criminals, depriving them from exercising one of the rights of citizen.
This is as it should be; there should be a price for citizenship. We all know how people treat free things