Congress's petition on EC clean chit for PM Narendra Modi, Amit Shah meets dead end

The Congress party's attempts to challenge the Election Commission's clean chit to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah reached a dead end at the Supreme Court on Wednesday, as the party either forgot to file a fresh petition or amend its earlier petition to include its challenge to the EC's orders.

Noting this technical flaw, the court dismissed the petition, although it left it open to the Congress if it wants to pursue any other remedy available under law to challenge EC's orders.

Sushmita Dev, Congress MP from Assam's Silchar, had alleged "discriminatory approach" used by the EC to give a clean chit to PM Modi and Shah who invoked the Army and Air Force in their election campaigns, even though the poll body had come down hard on other campaigners for similar remarks.

On Wednesday, when the matter came up for hearing, a bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Deepak Gupta said, "When we adjourned this petition on Monday, we were sure there would be a fresh petition filed challenging the EC orders. In half a day, you could have filed a writ petition."

Senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, representing Dev, said the court can still examine delay by the EC in dismissing the complaints and the manner in which orders were passed without offering reasons. "It's up to you to challenge the orders passed by a constitutional authority. But without a specific challenge to these orders before us, how can we hear? There are some norms we must follow," the court said.