Gujarat HC issues summons to Surat MP over pleas challenging his unopposed win

Ahmedabad: The Gujarat High Court has issued summons to the Bharatiya Janata Party MP from the Surat Lok Sabha constituency, Mukesh Dalal, over two petitions challenging his uncontested victory.

The court of Justice JC Doshi issued summons to Dalal, directing him to respond by August 9, after the matter came up for hearing on July 25, the lawyer for petitioners PS Champaneri said on Sunday.

Dalal was declared the winner on April 22, the last date for withdrawal of nomination, after Congress pick Nilesh Kumbhani's nomination was rejected and other candidates withdrew from the race.

The remaining 25 Lok Sabha seats in Gujarat went to polls on May 7 in the third phase of general elections. Including Surat, BJP won 25 seats in the state, with Congress bagging one.

The petitioners have challenged the legality and validity of the decision of the Surat collector and returning officer to reject Kumbhani's nomination.

The two petitions, filed by four voters from the Surat parliamentary constituency who are also Congress members, question the decision of the returning officer to reject Kumbhani's form under the provisions of Section 36 of the Representation of the People Act, concerning scrutiny of the nomination forms.

The petitioners have claimed that Kumbhani’s three proposers who later denied having signed his nomination papers had declared in an application before the deputy collector that they would be signing as proposers on his nomination form.

They had done so while applying for the certificate declaring them voters of the same constituency, a pre-condition for proposers.

Furthermore, the verification of signatures is not a collector’s job, they contended, stressing that the Congress, being a national party, doesn’t have any shortage of proposers for its candidates in a given constituency.

Dalal became the first candidate in the last 12 years to win a Lok Sabha contest unopposed. His was the first victory for the BJP in the recently concluded general elections whose results were declared on June 4.

District Collector and election officer Saurabh Pardhi handed the certificate of election to Dalal in the last hour of the withdrawal of nomination on April 22.

Kumbhani's nomination was rejected on the grounds of discrepancies in the signatures of his proposers who filed an affidavit stating that they had not signed the papers.

The nomination of his dummy candidate Suresh Padsala was also rendered invalid for the same reason.