The Supreme Court has held that frivolous petitions challenging the election of a candidate can be dismissed at the threshold as otherwise it would inhibit the elected representative from discharging his or her duties to voters. However, the apex court said it would interfere in election disputes to ensure purity of the process if there is flagrant violation of the laws by the candidates.
Interpreting Order VI Rule 16 and Order VII Rule 11 of the Code of Civil Procedure and Section 87 of the Representation of Peoples Act, the apex court said courts have the power to dismiss such petitions at the admission stage without a trial as the election of a candidate cannot be interefered with in a casual manner.
"The object of both the provisions is to ensure that meaningless litigation, which is otherwise bound to prove abortive, should not be permitted to occupy the judicial time of the courts.It must apply with greater vigour in election matters where the pendency of an election petition is likely to inhibit the representative of the people in the discharge of his public duties for which the electorate have reposed confidence in him," a bench of Justices D K Jain and H L Dattu said.
The bench made the remarks while dismissing the appeal filed by a defeated Nationalist Congress Party candidate Ram Sukh challenging the election of Dinesh Aggarwal who was elected on a Congress ticket to the Uttarkhand assembly in 2007. In the present case, the high court had dismissed Ram Sukh's petition at the admission stage on the ground that it did not disclose material facts and was not backed by any affidavit to support the allegation of corrupt practices against by Aggarwal to win the election.
Among other things, Ram Sukh's allegation was that Aggarwal had spread a rumour that the former had withdrawn
from the election and got a fabricated 'fatwa' from the Deoband (clergy) circulated among Muslim voters asking them to cast votes in his favour, which amounted to corrupt practices.
Ram Sukh's argument before the apex court was that his petition could not have been dismissed at the admission stage
(threshold) by the high court as the issue of providing evidence and supplying material facts should have been insisted only at the stage of the trial.Rejecting the argument, the apex court, citing a number of its earlier rulings, said a candidate challenging the election of his/her rival must necessarily produce material facts at the admission stage itself to support the
charge.
"It is mandatory that all material facts are set out in an election petition and it is also trite that if material facts are not stated in the petition, the same is liable to be dismissed on that ground alone," the bench observed.
