Khushi Bajpai
Published on: 25 August, 2022 at 18:20 IST
Case Title: Vr Soji vs. Veena George SLP
The Supreme Court of India on Wednesday dismissed a petition challenging the election of Minister for Health and Family Welfare, Veena George, in the Kerala State Assembly Elections of 2016.
The petitioner alleged that Veena had been involved in corrupt practices as per the Representation of the People’s Act while contesting in the 2016 elections.
Though a bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Bela M Trivedi dismissed the plea as infructuous, it also looked at the matter on merits at the insistence of the petitioner counsel, senior advocate Kailash Atha Pillai. He told the court that if there was any finding pertaining to corrupt practices during election campaigning, it would have large-scale ramifications.
It is the appellant’s case that the respondent, while contesting in the state assembly elections in 2016 in Aranmula constituency, resorted to non-compliance, suppression of material facts, which is in violation of Rule 4A of the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961. The SLP states that the respondent no.1 did not disclose details of a particular non-resident ordinary account while filling out her nomination form and this goes against the legal requirement.
The Supreme Court, however, sided with the high court’s view that there were no corrupt practices on the “grounds of religion” and refused to interfere in the matter.