Mumbai (Maharashtra): The Election Commission of India's (ECI) notification to organise a by-election for the Akola West assembly constituency was invalidated by the Bombay High Court's Nagpur bench on Tuesday.
The death of BJP MLA Govardhan Sharma forced this seat to be left empty. The new MLA is required by the rules to serve a minimum of six months in office. However, in this instance, the elected official would have only served a four-month term.
By virtue of Article 151 (Whoever knowingly joins or continues in any assembly of five or more persons likely to cause a disturbance of the public peace), this by-election was canceled.
Congressman Vivek Paraskar filed the Public Interest Litigation in this regard on March 20, and the Court rendered a decision on March 26. The Nagpur bench comprising Justice Anil Kilor and Justice MK and S Jawalkar heard the case on Tuesday, March 26 and gave out the order.
Petitioner Anil Dubey had challenged the Akola West by-election in the High Court claiming that the law provides that by-elections cannot be held when the primary election is less than a year away. Voters were being cheated by the by-election, the petitioner claimed.
Section 151(A) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 states that "a by-election for filling up the vacancy shall be held within a period of six months from the date of occurrence of the vacancy, provided that the same shall not apply if the remainder of the term in relation to the vacancy is less than one year," stated, advocate VB Gandhi.
The court accepted the arguments of the petitioners and ordered quashing of the notification of Akola West by-election. By-elections are scheduled for assembly seats in Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Telangana, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
The Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) had said that more than 97 crore voters are eligible to exercise their right to vote in the Lok Sabha elections and pleaded everyone to participate in this great celebration of democracy.
The CEC also said that the ECI was preparing to set up 10.5 lakh polling stations across the country. The by-election was scheduled on April 26 and vote tallying on June 4.
Read More:
