Tanvi Sinha
The Bombay High Court passed a judgement to refuse to maintain petitions that function under Article 226 of the Indian Constitution on grounds that on doing so they would be violating Article 243-O(b) of the Constitution.
A three-judge bench of Justice GS Kulkarni, Chief Justice Dipankar Datta, Justice AS Gadkari stated that writ jurisdiction cannot be something that can include rejection of nomination papers by the returning officer at gram panchayat elections.
This decision comes after the division bench in Bombay High Court found out it was dealing with many petitions that challenged the orders passed by the Returning Officer of Bhose Gram Panchayat of rejecting their nomination.
The petitioners were seeking for the order of the Returning officer to be pushed aside and to have the courts send a directive to the state election commission to conduct fresh elections again as well as to punish the officers who publish the impugned orders.
Due to some contentions with the division bench the bench dissected the matter into largely three questions and asked themselves if allowing such a petition would be any kind of intervention, obstruction towards the election, would rejection of nomination come under Article 243-O(b) and which case law would be deemed correct for interpretation of this judgment.
Advocate Sachindra Shetye for the State Election Commission stated that the petitioner neighbor had a civil or fundamental right on this issue as the right to contest elections are statutory rights governed in this particular case by the MVP Act and Bombay Village Panchayat Election Rules, 1959.
Advocate Dilip Bodake, for the petitioners, however, stated that if petitions were not entertained under Article 226 then filing election petition under the MVP Act as given by Section 15 of it, would hold void and that the ignorance of law with which the returning officers reject nomination papers would only continue.
After assessing all the arguments, the High Court came to the conclusion that a petition under Article 226 of the Constitution challenging improper rejection of nomination cannot be entertained.
They went by the NP Ponnuswami judgement and stated that the High Court did not have the authority to correct inefficient returning officers and that it was the duty of the legislative, elected by its people, instead.
