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| Prafulla Ghadei |
Cuttack, March 31: Orissa High Court has rejected finance minister Prafulla Ghadei’s plea seeking deletion of certain portions of the petition challenging his election from the Sukinda Assembly constituency nearly three years ago.
Former minister and senior Congress leader Sarat Rout had lost to Ghadei and filed the election petition. This is second time the high court has rejected a petition filed by the senior BJD leader in connection with the election petition.
Ghadei had filed the petition for deletion from Rout’s petition some portions relating to certain allegations before it is taken up for hearing.
While rejecting the plea, the single judge bench of Justice R.N. Biswal on Friday ruled that the election petition will be considered on merit without deleting any portion.
Ghadei had filed the petition seeking deletion of the portions in petition which cited alleged double entries of names of voters in the electoral roll of the constituency, registration of votes by persons twice within the constituency in favour of BJD and double entries of names of voters in both Sukinda and Korei constituencies. The petition had also sought deletion of the victory margin.
The election petition had alleged that there were double entries of names of as many as 5,000 voters in the electoral roll of the constituency. And votes of 3,000 of them were registered twice within the constituency in favour of BJD in violation of Section 62 of the Representation of Peoples' Act, 1951.
The acceptance of the nomination of BJP Dolagovinda Mahanta was improper as he had not subscribed his path after filing his nomination. Though objection was raised, the defect was glossed over. The rejection of the nomination could have been decisive as all the 2,436 votes the BJP nominee had got would have gone in favour of the Congress in view of the break up in BJD-BJP alliance, the election petition had contended. Rout had lost to Ghadei by a margin of 2,403 votes.
Initially, acting upon Rout’s election petition, the high court had on July 17, 2009 issued a notice to Ghadei and other candidates, who had contested from the Sukinda seat.