A court in Ahmedabad on Saturday gave clean chit to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, rejecting a petition filed by an AAP member which accused him of filing a `defective' affidavit during the 2012 Gujarat Assembly elections.
A court in Ahmedabad on Saturday gave clean chit to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, rejecting a petition filed by an AAP member which accused him of filing a `defective' affidavit during the 2012 Gujarat Assembly elections.
Ahemdabad district Additional Sessions judge G N Rana rejected the petition filed by Nishant Verma who had sought registration of a first information report against Modi for non-disclosure of marital status in his election affidavit.
"As per Section 33, action can be termed as an offence only when false information is given or concealed," the sessions court said in its order. Section 33 of the Representation of People Act, 1951, deals with the information provided along with the nomination. The court also said that the complaint was time-barred and the complainant was not a voter registered in Maninagar constituency from where Modi had contested in 2012.
"The court cannot take cognisance as the complaint has not been filed within the time period of a year....cognisance of such case can only be taken by a voter...who resides in the same constituency," said the order.
Verma was registered as a voter in Satellite constituency. Modi, while filing nomination for the 2012 Assembly election, had left the column about the spouse blank in his affidavit. He disclosed the name of his wife Jashodaben for the first time when he filed nomination from Vadodara during the last year's Lok Sabha elections.
Verma had earlier moved a magistrate's court through his lawyer K R Koshti in April last year after the city police refused to register FIR against Modi. The magistrate rejected the petition because the complaint had been filed late but held that non-disclosure of marital status amounted to an offence.
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