The Supreme Court on Wednesday disposed of the petition filed by Congress Member of Parliament Sushmita Dev last month, where she had alleged inaction by the Election Commission on violations of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) by Prime Minster Narendra Modi and Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah.

A bench, led by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, said the petition had become infructuous as the instances of purported violations, which dealt with complaints of alleged hate speech and usage of armed forces for political propaganda, had been dealt with by the poll body.

“The Commission has decided rightly or wrongly the pending complaints against the Prime Minister and the BJP President, the merits of the orders can be challenged only by filing a fresh petition,” the bench said.

The court also refused to entertain Congress’ complaint against a string of clean chits handed out by the EC to Modi and Shah, saying it would not go into these issues, unless they are specifically challenged.

On Tuesday, Dev had filed an affidavit alleging that the EC’s decisions were arbitrary and lacked transparency because it had withheld the dissenting note submitted by one of the three commissioners examining the complaints.

Addressing Congress’ lawyer Abhishek Manu Singhivi on Wednesday, the bench said, “Instead of filing an affidavit you should have filed a petition challenging the order of the Election Commission.”

According to persons in the know, who did not wish to be named, election commissioner Ashok Lavasa had differed with the majority view in five different complaints of model code violations against Modi and Shah.

As the rules allow for the order to be issued on the basis of a majority, the PM and Shah were given clean chits in all the cases. HT had seen two of these orders and there was no mention of a dissenting voice in them.

“We don’t see how we can go into the orders of the commission unless a specific challenge is made,” the order by the bench of Justice Gogoi and Justice Deepak Gupta, stated.

“Our writ petition had technically served its purpose, because all 11 complaints were decided only due to the writ and had not decided earlier for weeks. The SC on May 6 had allowed us to file affidavit by today which we did. The court has now asked us to file a fresh writ and grants us the liberty to do so. Though we believe technicality should not override substance, we have liberty and may file a fresh writ,” Singhvi said.

Dev had approached the SC on April 29, accusing the poll panel of inaction on complaints against Modi and Shah. Soon after that the EC fast-tracked action on pending complaints.

First Published: May 09, 2019 00:05 IST