Gujarat High Court to hear plea on election of Ahmed Patel in RS polls

New Delhi: The Gujarat High Court today had rejected dismissal plea challenging Congress Leader Ahmed Patel’s election in Rajya Sabha 2017.

The plea was filed by the BJP leader Balwantsinh Rajput who challenged his election in last year’s Rajya Sabha elections.

Justice Bela Trivedi was hearing the plea. Counsel appearing for Ahmed Patel was P S Champaneri sought dismissal of Rajput’s petition for not serving an attested copy of the petition to the respondents as mandated under the law, to which Rajput’s lawyer Nirupam Nanavati responded saying it was a minor flaw and can easily be corrected.

The court had earlier directed Rajput to remove one of the respondents i.e. Election Commission from the case. Rajput was challenging EC’s order which had invalidated votes of MLAs Raghavjee Patel and Bholabhai Gohel for showing ballot papers to the BJP’s polling agents during the election.

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal had earlier hearing argued that according to the Apex Court’s judgement, MLAs are supposed to vote for their party candidates and hence there was no such undue influence on voters to vote for Congress leader Ahmed Patel as alleged by the opposition parties.

Since the votes of the two MLAs were invalidated by the EC, Rajput moved the High Court against the EC for declaring Ahmed Patel as the winner in the Rajput in his petition further alleged that Patel had reportedly bribed the two MLAs on their visit to Bengaluru before the election.