Lok Sabha Elections 2024: Gujarat HC refuses to grant urgent hearing to PIL challenging BJP's uncontested win in Surat

Ahmedabad: The Gujarat High Court has refused to take up for urgent hearing a Public Interest Litigation challenging the uncontested victory of BJP candidate Mukesh Dalal from the Surat Lok Sabha constituency.

A division bench of Chief Justice Sunita Agarwal and Justice Aniruddha P Mayee on Tuesday told the petitioner's lawyer that he should have filed an election petition, and not a PIL.

Petitioner Bhavesh Patel sought an urgent hearing, arguing that he was a voter registered in Surat and the Election Commission gave a certificate of election declaring Dalal a winner without conducting polling, depriving him of the option of negative voting.

"If a candidate is elected uncontested, he is also in the same position as a winning candidate who has been declared a winning candidate after a process of polling and counting of votes. He does not fall in any other different category, and there is no provision in the Representation of the People Act to treat him differently. Don't make it a PIL issue," Chief Justice Agarwal said.

As per the law, if a dispute is about the election of a candidate, one has to file an election petition, she said.

"You are highlighting a flaw in the procedure by which a candidate has been declared a winning candidate. Is this your argument? This argument falls within the jurisdiction of an authority by way of an election petition," the chief justice added.

She will take up the matter when it comes before her in the normal course, and there was no urgency because the petitioner had approached the wrong forum, Justice Agarwal said.

The chief justice also frowned upon the lawyer for seeking an urgent hearing with folded hands.

"Advocates are not supposed to fold their hands in the court, they are supposed to agitate the rights of the party. If you are putting up the case of anyone, you are not supposed to fold your hands ever," she said.

Dalal was declared a winner on the last date of withdrawal of nominations after the nomination form of Congress' Nilesh Kumbhani was rejected on technical grounds, and other candidates withdrew from the race.