HC notices to Gadkari, ECI over pleas challenging his election

The Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court on Thursday issued notices to Union minister Nitin Gadkari and the Election Commission of India, seeking their stands on a bunch of petitions challenging the minister's election in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

A single-judge bench of Justice A S Chandurkar took up for hearing three separate election petitions filed by Congress leader Nana Patole, Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) candidate Manohar Dabrase and one Nafis Khan, alleging electoral malpractices in the poll process.

Patole and Dabrase were pitted against Gadkari in the Lok Sabha elections held earlier this year. The BJP stalwart defeated Patole by 1.97 lakh votes.

While Patole claimed that the laid down procedure for the election process was not followed by the state election commissioner, Dabrase in his petition alleged that defective electronic voting machines were used for the polling.

After hearing brief arguments from counsel for various petitioners, Justice Chandurkar issued notices to Gadkari, the ECI and the collector, who was the returning officer for Nagpur, and directed them to file their affidavits responding to the allegations in petitions.

After issuing notices, the court posted the petitions for further hearing on August 22.