Indore (Madhya Pradesh): The Indore Bench of Madhya Pradesh High Court has dismissed an election petition challenging the 2019 Lok Sabha win of BJP candidate Shankar Lalwani.
In the polls, Lalwani had garnered 10.68 lakh votes and had defeated the Congress’s Pankaj Sanghvi by a huge margin of 5.47 lakh votes from the Indore Lok Sabha seat.
Sanghvi had moved the HC seeking that Lalwani’s win be declared null and void. His submission had stated that the Election Commission guidelines related to electronic voting machines (EVMs) had not been adhered to during the voting and counting, which, he claimed, had helped Lalwani.
“A close scrutiny of the election petition reveals that the entire plea was filed with general objections only about non-compliance with the rules and guidelines issued by theElection Commission which were not at all case-centric in nature,” a single Bench of justice Subodh Abhyankar ruled.
Dismissing the plea, justice Abhyankar said, “This court is of the considered opinion that the election petition is drafted in such a manner that the objections raised therein can be copied and pasted in just about every other election petition, questioning the election of any other parliamentary seat anywhere in India.”
“In such circumstances, with the pleadings of the election petition being vague and lacking material facts, its outcome appears to be a foregone conclusion. This court is of the considered view that this is a fit case to invoke the powers conferred on this court by Order 7 Rule 11 of the CPC to reject the plaint at the threshold itself,” the order said.
