Congress will take legal action on the Surat issue, where Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Mukesh Dalal was elected unopposed to the Lok Sabha on April 22, senior leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi said in Ahmedabad on Sunday. Stated.
Surat assembly candidate Nilesh Kumbani’s nomination form was filed after his three proposers submitted affidavits to Surat state secretary Saurabh Pardi claiming that the signatures on the document were not theirs. It was rejected on the 21st of the month. The nomination form of Suresh Pathala, Congress’s alternate candidate in Surat, was also invalidated for the same reason.
Following this, the DEO announced on April 22 that Bharatiya Janata Party’s candidate Mukesh Dalal was unopposed from Surat after the remaining eight candidates, including one from the Bahujan Samaj Party, withdrew their nomination forms. announced that he had been elected. On Friday, the Gujarat Congress suspended Kumbani from party activities for six years. Year.
However, senior advocate Singhvi Sunday argued that the returning police officer cannot determine the authenticity of the signature. “Legal action in these matters will take place after the election. No one is talking about winning or losing, but we are talking about the principle. Returning police officers must determine the authenticity of the signatures. It is not a summary procedure. He cannot decide to sign. Yes, he is Abhishek Singhvi. He is a different man. These are the summaries of what he can decide. How can he determine the authenticity of the signature without sending it to a forensic laboratory? answered a question from The Indian Express.
Singhvi also highlighted that returning police officers had forgotten about NOTA. “In an interview two days ago, he proudly displayed the Electoral Commission handbook, which states that if someone withdraws and no one remains, the remaining candidate will be declared the winner. But that handbook was created before NOTA was born. NOTA is a candidate. As long as NOTA is alive and active on paper, it cannot be done.”
He also questioned the Bharatiya Janata Party’s action, saying if it was confident of winning Surat, why did it call it a “choice rather than an election”? “On the contrary, if you were so confident you should have held an election,” he said.
Singhvi also claimed that he was making a mockery of democracy. “Of the 417 BJP candidates in this Indian parliamentary election, 116 are candidates from various other parties (who later joined the BJP) and majority of them are from the Congress. 85 per cent took place after 2014. In a state like Haryana, 50 per cent of those who claim to be from the Bharatiya Janata Party are not from the Bharatiya Janata Party… Contraptions, subterfuges and gags are the model for the Bharatiya Janata Party. “They’ve modified it and proven it over and over again, and now we’re seeing a new definition: choice, not election.”
Mr Singhvi described the incidents of hate speech reported during the election period as “unfortunate”. “The person on trial is not the Prime Minister, but the Election Commission. It takes decades to establish an organization, but it only takes a moment, a few months, to destroy an organization. Trust is at stake. Moved 10 days ago (complaint). A limited and critical 10-day election creates a false equivalency. Someone else is committing the (violation), but the notice will be served on the other person,” he said.
The issue has become more popular than it is being talked about, with the Supreme Court rejecting a plea seeking 100 percent cross-verification of electronic voting machine (EVM) data and Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) records. Singhvi said that it raises the issue of: “We ourselves are not raising any legal challenge to the existence of EVMs. In fact, it would be a mockery to challenge the existence of EVMs two months before elections. It was about expanding our reach,” he explained.
© Indian Express Private Limited
Date first uploaded: April 28, 2024 22:27 IST
