Indore: While hearing an election petition, Indore bench of Madhya Pradesh High Court on Wednesday dismissed an interlocutory application by agriculture minister Sachin Yadav and imposed a cost of Rs 25000 on him. He was directed to submit the amount in Indian Army Relief Fund within a week.
Justice SK Awasthi also directed him to file the reply of election petition within two weeks, failing which application filed by the petitioner under Order 8 Rule 10 of the Civil Procedure Code (CPC) will be considered and suitable order will be passed.
Election petition was filed by Atmaram Patel, who contested election against Yadav from Kasrawad constituency in Khargone district.
In his petition, Patel had alleged that Yadav had taken to corrupt practices during Assembly elections and demanded to make his election null and void. Through Interlocutary Application, the respondent requested the court to dismiss the application as returning officer had already conducted enquiry into the allegations and found them fake.
The petitioner’s counsel raised an objection on IA saying is shown to be notarised on 17/06/2019; whereas the same appears to be drawn/dated on 24/06/2019, which reflects that, the contents of the application were not perused. This anomaly, tantamount to contempt of court as respondent made false statement on oath so far as the contents of the affidavit is concocted.
The judge observed that the petitioner has carefully pleaded the particulars instances of commission of corrupt practices by the respondent with date, time and place and at whose instance such corrupt practices have been committed, which in his opinion is substantial compliance of the Section 83 of the RP Act.
In case of IA dates, the judge said “I am of the view that firstly the application filed under Order 7 Rule 11 of CPC is not narrating any new facts and is actually drawing an inference from the factual narrations in the election petition. Therefore, the anomaly pointed out by the petitioner cannot be treated as wrong statement of facts and I hold that the preliminary objection has no merits.”
