Not right time for court to interfere: HC to petitioners

HYDERABAD: A division bench of Telangana High Court on Thursday, while refusing to interfere in petitions filed regarding the rejection of nomination papers for Lok Sabha election, granted liberty to the petitioners to file election petition on their grievance after completion of election process in the State. The bench was disposing of petitions filed in the form of lunch motion by J Naresh and four others, challenging rejection of their nomination papers by the concerned returning officers at Peddapalli and Secunderabad Lok Sabha constituencies.

Petitioners’ counsel Kalvala Sanjeev told the court that the petitioners’ nomination papers were rejected by the returning officers on ‘trivial grounds’ such as use of whitener, variation in signatures, non-mention of EPIC card number and so on. He urged the court to declare the action of the returning officer as illegal, to set aside the same and to take action against the concerned returning officers who were accepting nomination papers ‘as per their discretion’.

On the other hand, the counsel for ECI submitted that courts cannot interfere in matters relating to elections after issuance of notification for conduct of Parliament elections. In fact, the petitioners have an alternative remedy by filing an election petition on their grievance instead of filing the present cases, the counsel added.

After hearing both sides, the bench said that it was not the right time for the courts to interfere in the matters relating to elections. Citing the Supreme Court guidelines and the rules of the Representation of People’s Act, the bench said that their hands were tied up not to interfere in the election process once the notification was issued.  If the petitioners feel that the rejection of their nomination papers was illegal they can file election petition after  the polls, the bench noted.