New Delhi, Feb. 1: The Supreme Court today overturned Patna High Court’s disqualification of a Bihar MP for not revealing information about his first wife and her assets, saying it had not been established how the non-disclosure affected the poll outcome.

The apex court restored the Jhanjharpur parliamentary seat to the JD(U)’s Mangani Lal Mandal, which he had won in 2009. It also slammed the high court’s order of last November and the delay, and fined the petitioner Rs 1 lakh for “wasting” the judiciary’s time.

The judges were scathing in their criticism of the high court order.

“The order overlooks the most vital aspect as to how non-disclosure of information concerning the first wife, their children and their assets have materially affected the result of the election,” Justice R.M. Lodha, part of a two-judge bench with Justice S.J. Mukhopadhaya, said.

There were no pleadings on this point or any evidence, Lodha said. “We are surprised that in absence of such evidence, the high court declared his election void. The judgment is unsustainable. As a matter of law, the election petition deserved to be dismissed at the threshold.”

The judges also decried the time the high court took to decide the case despite a specific parliamentary mandate to decide such poll petitions within six months. The order had come on November 25, 2011, over two years after the Lok Sabha polls.

The court asked Vishnu Deo Bhandari, a voter from the Jhanjharpur constituency who had challenged Mandal’s election, to cough up Rs 1 lakh and rejected his pleas for a waiver. “Those behind you will pay the fine. So much time has been wasted on your petition,” the bench said.

Mandal had claimed in earlier hearings that the failure to disclose the information about his first wife, their five children and their assets in the nomination papers was not deliberate but because of ignorance. He had only mentioned his second wife Arti Mandal’s name in the nomination papers.

Bhandari had contended Mandal had, by not disclosing such information, violated the right to information of the electors of the constituency, as read into, interpreted, declared by the Supreme Court while considering the different facets of the right to freedom of speech and expression enshrined in Article 19 (1)(a) 2 of the Constitution.