Gujarat: 7 poll petitions filed against S Jaishankar, Jugalji Thakor’s win

Source: dnaindia.com

The Gujarat High Court on Wednesday questioned Congress leader Gaurav Pandya, who unsuccessfully contested the Rajya Sabha election against External Affairs minister S Jaishankar, on why he has filed two separate petitions challenging the Rajya Sabha poll victory of BJP’s Jaishankar and Jugalji Thakor.

By-elections for the two Rajya Sabha seats vacated by BJP’s Amit Shah and Smriti Irani post their Lok Sabha victory was held on July 5 in which Jaishankar and Thakor emerged as winners against Congress’s Pandya and Chandrika Chudasama. Thereafter, Pandya moved the High Court challenging the victory on the ground that the Election Commission should not have held separate elections for the two seats in contravention of the constitutional norm of ‘proportional representation by a single transferable vote for Rajya Sabha elections’.

During the hearing of the election petitions filed by Pandya, the single-judge bench of Justice Bela Trivedi asked the Congress leader’s counsel BM Mangukiya on how Pandya can file two separate petitions challenging the same issue. Justice Trivedi remarked that both the petitions are a word-to-word copy of each other.

Following the court’s remark, Mangukiya submitted that five separate election petitions challenging the same election have been already filed by him on behalf of Chudasama and leader of opposition in the state Assembly Paresh Dhanani. Apart from the two election petitions filed by Pandya, two petitions have been filed by Chudasama and three petitions have been filed by Dhanani.

According to Mangukiya, candidates can file an election petition against the returned candidates pitted against them and cannot challenge the election of other winning candidates. If Pandya files one election petition challenging the victory of one, the defense can raise objection claiming that although the entire election has been challenged, the other returned candidate is not present before the court.

To avoid this inconsistency, we have filed multiple petitions within the specified time limit of 45 days of the declaration of results, Mangukiya said.