No relief for Ahmed Patel, has to face trial on plea by BJP rival

The Supreme Court Thursday directed the Gujarat High Court to “proceed with the trial of the election petition” filed by BJP’s Balvantsinh Rajput, challenging senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel’s election to Rajya Sabha. Rajput had lost the election to Patel.

Patel had approached the Supreme Court against the High Court order dismissing his plea challenging the maintainability of the petition.

Fixing this for final hearing in February, a bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice S K Kaul said the High Court would, in the meantime, go ahead with the trial.

In July last year, a bench headed by the then CJI Dipak Misra had allowed the High Court to frame issues that have to be decided in the matter, but said it should not proceed further. The Supreme Court had also remanded the matter back to the High Court for consideration on the limited point of maintainability of the election petition, but the High Court dismissed it.

Patel contended that the decision of the poll panel could not be challenged through an election petition. He was elected to Rajya Sabha last year after defeating Rajput, who had resigned from the Congress to join the BJP. He emerged winner after the Election Commission cancelled the votes of rebel Congress MLAs, Bholabhai Gohil and Raghavbhai Patel, bringing down the number of votes required for a majority.

Rajput moved the High Court against the Election Commission decision to invalidate the votes of the two rebel MLAs.