New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday sought response from Prajwal Revanna, the grandson of former Prime Minister HD DeveGowda, on a plea challenging his election in 2019 from Hassan Lok Sabha constituency as a joint candidate of the Janata Dal Secular and the Congress.
A bench of Chief Justice SA Bobde and Justices AS Bopanna and Hrishiksh Roy issued notice to the returned candidate from the high-profile constituency on an appeal challenging the Karnataka High Court’s order by which an election petition against his win was dismissed.
In the proceedings held through video-conferencing, the top court issued notice and tagged the appeal filed by G Devarajegowda for hearing with other similar pending plea filed by the BJP candidate on the issue. Mr Devarajegowda in the plea said that his election petition was dismissed by the High Court on “procedural irregularities”. The plea said that Mr Prajwal had resorted to unfair and corrupt practices and his election should be set aside. It said the High Court did not consider the fact that by dismissing the election petition, it was running a risk of having a representative in parliament who has not got the maximum number of valid votes.
The petitioner, an advocate by profession, sought a declaration of rival BJP candidate, A Manju, as the winner for having secured the maximum number of valid votes. A separate appeal was earlier filed by Mr Manju against the High Court order and the top court had already issued notice to the retuned candidate on that.
Mr Manju had challenged the 2019 election of Mr Prajwal on the ground that there was allegedly non-disclosure of assets held by him in his election affidavit. Mr Prajwal was declared winner with 6,76,606 votes. Mr Manju came first runner-up with 5,35,282 votes.
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