The Supreme Court Wednesday affirmed a Bombay High Court order that struck off certain allegations from a petition challenging Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari’s election in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. The petition had accused Gadkari of submitting false information in his nomination form and election affidavit.
A bench of Justices Surya Kant and N Kotiswar Singh said the reasoning by the Bombay High Court was “absolutely correct”. The court added, “Let us be fair to everyone. There is no concealment of facts.”
The Supreme Court was hearing two appeals challenging the February 26, 2021, order of the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court. One of the appeals was filed by Nafis Khan, a voter in the Nagpur Lok Sabha constituency, from where Gadkari has won three consecutive polls in 2014, 2019 and 2024. The second appeal was filed by candidates who contested against Gadkari in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
The apex court noted that the matter pertains to 2019 and Gadkari’s term since the victory was already over and that fresh elections had since been held, which he won again.
While refusing to quash the petition challenging his election, the high court had partly allowed Gadkari’s application and struck off some of the contentions raised in the election petition. These included submissions with regard to the income earned by the minister’s family members, land owned by them, and expenditures made during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
As per the election petitioner, disclosed in his affidavit that he did not own any land personally but showed his source of income to be through agriculture, thereby making a false statement.
But the high court had said that “there is substantial and adequate compliance with the information sought in the affidavit that was required to be filed with the nomination form”.
“The objection is more to the form than to the substance. The information furnished cannot be said to be incomplete as the Survey number and location have been mentioned nor misleading as nothing incorrect according to the election petitioner has been mentioned therein,” the high court had said.
The high court had pointed out that Gadkari’s “affidavit indicates that” his wife is the owner of certain lands in Dhapewada in the Nagpur district.
It further said, “the defect if it could be called one in not giving further details of the location of the lands in question cannot be said to be substantial in character…for the nomination paper to be rejected by the Returning Officer. It is thus found that the requisite information as required by the affidavit in the light of the description column of paragraph 7(B) has been furnished by mentioning the Survey number and its location.”
The high court had noted that some of the other allegations “are totally vague and based on conjectures” and “contains mere allegations without any material facts”.
Directing striking off of the paragraph containing the allegations, the high court had said, “There are no material facts on the basis of which the election petition could proceed further on these pleadings.”
