Besides Patel and EC, Justice Bela Trivedi also issued notices to BJP chief Amit Shah and Union Minister Smriti Irani, who had effortlessly won the election
The Gujarat High Court on Monday issued notices to the Election Commission (EC) and senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel on a petition filed by former Congress chief whip and BJP's third candidate, Balvantsinh Rajput, who had unsuccessfully contested against Patel in the recently held Rajya Sabha elections in Gujarat.
Besides Patel and EC, Justice Bela Trivedi also issued notices to BJP chief Amit Shah and Union Minister Smriti Irani, who had effortlessly won the election. The notices are returnable on September 21. The development came on the day 43 Congress MLAs met party president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi in New Delhi. Rajput, who was Congress's chief whip in the Gujarat Assembly, had quit the party in the last week of July and formally joined the BJP, which nominated him as its third candidate for Rajya Sabha polls. While Shah and Irani won comfortably, Patel barely scraped through, after the votes of two dissident Congress MLAs were declared invalid by the EC.
On Friday, ten days after the August 8 polls, Rajput, one of the richest politicians in the state, with assets worth Rs 315 crore in his name, filed a petition in the high court, challenging the EC's decision to invalidate the two votes, which proved a decisive factor in Patel's victory. In his petition, the BJP nominee contended that once the Returning Officer (RO) had ruled that the two votes were valid, the EC had no power to entertain any appeal against the order or to issue any directive to the RO to accept or reject any vote. Thus, the only remedy before the aggrieved party was to move court, the petition said, urging that the EC's order was patently illegal, and hence, should be set aside.
The petition further contended that the votes of two other Congress MLAs — Shailesh Parmar and Mitesh Garasia — who had also revealed their ballot to unauthorised persons, should be declared invalid as well.
The two MLAs had voted for Patel. The petition said that if their votes are declared invalid, Patel will not get enough votes in the first round and Rajput will bag the required number in the second round, when preference votes are counted. Hence, the court should set aside the EC's verdict and declare Rajput the winner.
Patel secured 44 votes, the minimum needed to win, while Rajput had to be content with 38 votes. Two dissident Congress MLAs, Raghavji Patel and Bholabhai Gohel, whose votes were invalidated by EC, had voted for Rajput. If it was not for the two invalid votes, Patel would have needed more than 44 votes to win.
In such a scenario, the second preference votes would have come into calculation, and the election result would have been different.
The Gujarat Rajya Sabha election was one of the most bitterly contested polls in recent times. The strength of the Congress came down from 57 to 43, after 14 of its MLAs, including former CM Shankersinh Vaghela, either quit or cross-voted in the elections.
The election result was declared at almost 2 am after the counting of votes was repeatedly held up due to the EC hearing and other issues. The senior Congress leader secured the votes of 43 Congress MLAs and one vote of lone JD(U) candidate, Chhotu Vasava.
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