Kapil Sibal appears for Ahmed Patel, objects to Rajput’s plea

AHMEDABAD: Senior counsel of the Supreme Court and former minister Kapil Sibal on Wednesday appeared before the Gujarat high court on behalf of senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel and raised several objections to the petition filed by BJP candidate Balwantsinh Rajput, who has challenged the Rajya Sabha election results.
Rajput approached the HC in August last year after he was defeated by Patel, who got 44 votes against the 38 votes secured by Rajput. Rajput questioned the ECI’s decision to hold two votes by rebel Congress MLAs – Raghavji Patel and Bholabhai Gohel – invalid, as they had shown their votes to people other than the Congress party’s representative. Rajput held that the returning officer had declared these two votes as valid and the ECI had no jurisdiction to declare them invalid. Thus the ECI’s intervention in the issue and its order is illegal and should be set aside.

Sibal objected to Rajput’s making the election commission a party in the litigation. Rajput’s lawyer rebutted by submitting that the grievance was against ECI’s decision and hence making it a party respondent in the application was justified.

Sibal also argued that Rajput did not remove office objections from his election petitions and the application was not filed in the manner that HC norms require it to be.

The court reserved its order on Sibal’s objections till March 20.