Gandhinagar, April 20: The Gujarat High Court on Friday rejected Rajya Sabha (RS) Congress member Ahmed Patel's plea against the admission of BJP's Balwantsinh Rajput's petition challenging the Election Commission (EC)'s decision that resulted in Ahmed Patel's victory in the RS polls last year.
Justice Bela Trivedi dismissed the application by Patel who was represented by senior Congress leader and lawyer Kapil Sibal in the court.
Balwantsinh Rajput, a former Congress MLA, defected from the party to join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) just ahead of the August 8 Rajya Sabha elections for three seats in the state and was fielded as a BJP nominee for one of the seats.
Rajput lost the election to Patel after the EC passed an order invalidating the votes of former Congress MLAs Raghavjee Patel and Bholabhai Gohel over flouting of poll norms. Going against the party's decision, the two Congress leaders had voted for Rajput instead of Patel. The votes were invalidated by the EC, thus paving the way for Patel's victory.
After the elections, Rajput had filed a petition in August 2017 questioning the Commission's invalidation of two votes by rebel Congress leaders following objections raised by the Congress.
He also accused Patel of indulging in corrupt practices by taking 44 Congress MLAs to a resort in Bengaluru and keeping them in captivity and spending lavishly on them.
May 4 has been fixed as the date for initiating the case proceedings in the court.
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India has agreed already to drop its tariffs to nothing: President Trump
New York/Washington, May 7 (PTI): US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said India has “agreed” to drop its high tariffs “to nothing”.
“I mean, India as an example, has one of the highest tariffs in the world. We’re not going to put up with that, and they’ve agreed already to drop it. They’ll drop it to nothing. They’ve already agreed. They would have never done that for anybody else but me,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
Trump and visiting Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke to reporters as they met in the Oval Office to discuss the US-Canada trade.
“So we’re going to put down some numbers and we’re going to say our country is open for business and they’re going to come in and they’re going to pay for the privilege of being able to shop in the United States of America. It’s very simple. It’s very simple,” he added.
In the past, Trump has called India “tariff king” and a “big abuser”.
Last month, Trump had said that negotiations with India over a bilateral trade deal are “coming along great” and he thinks “we’ll have a deal with India”.
