Relief to Guj minister as HC quashes FIR in cheating case

The Gujarat High Court on Wednesday quashed an FIR filed against state minister Kunvarji Bavaliya in a case of cheating and forgery for acquisition of a piece of land in Jasdan in 2005, when he was a Congress MLA.

Justice S H Vora quashed the FIR registered against him at Vinchhiya police station in 2005 for allegedly forging the signatures of village sarpanch Savita Vasani and also forging documents to acquire six acres of land at Amrapur village for Sarvajanik Education Trust, of which he was one of the trustees.

Bavaliya had won from Jasdan in the 2017 assembly polls on a Congress ticket. In July 2018, he quit the Congress and also resigned from the assembly, and joined the ruling BJP, which immediately made him a Cabinet minister. He had won as a BJP candidate in the December 2018 bypoll.

He was given the portfolio of water supply, animal husbandry and rural housing.

The CID had conducted a probe in the case when Bavaliya was the Congress MLA from Jasdan and a charge sheet had been filed at Jasdan court in 2011.

In October this year, Bavaliya had moved the high court seeking quashing of the FIR filed against him under sections 420 (cheating and dishonestly), and 465, 467, 468 (forgery), among others at Vinchhiya Police Station.