Cuttack, May 12: Orissa High Court today slapped Congress MLA Jogesh Singh with a fine of Rs 5,000 for delaying the trial proceedings of two election petitions that challenged his election to the Assembly from Sundargarh in May 2014.

Defeated BJP candidate Sahadev Xaxa and Ajay Patel, a voter of the constituency, had filed the petitions. The Sundargarh Assembly seat is reserved for scheduled tribe candidates. But, the petitions had alleged that Singh had submitted a fake caste certificate along with his nomination papers.

On May 4, the court had fixed May 12 for Singh to produce witness. But when the matter came up today, no witness was produced for giving evidence. Instead an application was filed seeking more time. It was vehemently objected by the counsels of the petitioners, who alleged that seeking time was a tactics for delaying the completion of the trial.

"Taking note of it, the single-judge bench of Justice B.K. Nayak imposed costs of Rs 2,500 in each of the two election petitions and posted the matter to June 21 for further trial proceedings in the case", Xaxa's counsel Gopal Agarwal said.

On October 13, Justice B.K. Nayak had allowed adjournment of evidence from Singh to November 3, 2015, subject to payment of Rs 1,000 by him to each of the two petitioners.

The court had framed the issues in the case on April 15, 2015. But the trial proceedings had not been able to advance due to seeking of adjournments by Singh on most dates.

The petitioners' contention was whether Singh managed to get a false scheduled tribe certificate showing his caste as Bhuyan solely on the basis of land patta and submitted such false caste certificate along with his nomination paper.

The court is to decided whether the result of election on May 16, 2014, declaring Singh as elected from Sundargarh Assembly constituency is void and liable to be set aside.