SC to hear Ahmed Patel's plea challenging petition against his election to RS

The Supreme Court will next week hear a petition of senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel seeking a direction to the Gujarat High Court not to proceed with the hearing of a plea challenging his election to the Rajya Sabha.

In his plea, Patel has said that the election petition filed by his rival BJP nominee Balwantsinh Rajput in the high court was not maintainable and needed to be dismissed.

A bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud said it will hear Patel's petition on July 9.

Advocate Devadatt Kamat, appearing for Patel, mentioned the matter before the bench and said that the high court was moving ahead with the hearing on Rajput's poll petition.

"The election petition filed in high court cannot challenge the order of the Election Commission. This petition is not maintainable and should be dismissed," he said.

The bench then said it will hear the petition on Monday next.

Patel was elected to the Rajya Sabha last year after defeating Rajput, who had resigned from the Congress to join the BJP.

The win for the Congress leader came after the Election Commission had cancelled the votes of rebel Congress MLAs, Bhola Bhai Gohil and Raghav Bhai Patel. This had brought down the requirement for an outright victory for a candidate to 44 from 45.

Immediately after Patel got elected, Rajput had filed a petition in the high court challenging the poll panel's decision to invalidate the votes of the two rebel MLAs. Had these votes been counted, he would have defeated Patel, Rajput had contended.

In his petition in the high court, Rajput had also alleged that Patel had taken the party MLAs to a resort in Bengaluru before the election, which, he claimed, amounted to bribing the voters.

Patel had challenged Rajput's plea and sought its dismissal at the "threshold level" for not serving the respondents an attested copy of the petition as required under the law.

The high court, however, rejected his plea and said the petitioner had substantially complied with the provisions of law and the defects could be easily cured.

Patel moved the top court against the high court order, saying that Rajput's petition was "devoid of merits" and failed to show any "cause of action".