In relief for AAP, High Court restores 20 disqualified MLAs
New Delhi: In a major relief to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the Delhi High Court on Friday restored the legislatorship of 20 ruling party MLAs who were disqualified for holding offices-of-profit.
Setting aside the Election Commission recommendation disqualifying the MLAs, the court quashed the January 20 presidential order and referred the case back to the poll panel for a fresh hearing.
A division bench of Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Chander Shekhar said the January 19 poll panel recommendation given to the President "is vitiated and bad in law for failure to comply with principles of natural justice".
It said there was a "violation of natural justice and no oral hearing was given to the AAP MLAs before disqualifying them as legislators".
The court had reserved its judgment on February 28 after the MLAs and the Election Commission concluded their arguments.
Delhi Chief Minister and AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal described it as a victory for truth.
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Mamata’s allegations on Bengal SIR baseless, exaggerated: BJP's Suvendu
Kolkata (PTI): Leader of the Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, on Sunday termed Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's allegations over the ongoing SIR in the state as "baseless and exaggerated", and accused her of trying to derail the electoral roll revision exercise for political reasons.
In a post on X, Adhikari also said he has written to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, and claimed that the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls was "exposing the rot in the voter lists - bogus entries, duplicates, and infiltrators that have been nurtured under the TMC's watch for years".
The BJP leader alleged that the SIR exercise was "damaging the TMC's electoral prospects", and that's why the CM was resorting to hysteria".
Banerjee had on Saturday written to the CEC, alleging that the ongoing SIR of electoral rolls has been turned into an exercise to exclude voters rather than correct records.
In her third letter to Kumar since the beginning of SIR, the chief minister accused the Election Commission of "political bias, insensitivity, and high-handedness" during the exercise.
“I would again reiterate that her claims are nothing but a desperate attempt to derail this crucial process, which is exposing the rot in our voter lists - bogus entries, duplicates and infiltrators that have been nurtured under TMC’s watch for years,” Adhikari alleged in the post.
In his letter to the CEC, dated January 10, the leader of the opposition described the chief minister’s objections as a “politically motivated attempt” to obstruct the SIR and termed the ECI’s move as "essential to ensure free, fair and transparent" elections in the state.
"The chief minister’s portrayal of this exercise as ‘unplanned, insensitive and inhuman’ is nothing short of a gross exaggeration, blown out of proportion to create public hysteria and shift focus from her government’s failures," the BJP leader alleged.
He claimed that the SIR exercise had "exposed vulnerabilities in the electoral rolls that threatened the ruling party’s electoral prospects", triggering what he termed “unfounded outbursts” from the state administration.
On December 16, the Election Commission published the draft electoral rolls after the first phase of the SIR, with the electorate dropping from 7.66 crore to 7.08 crore following the deletion of over 58 lakh names.
The second phase, which began on December 27, involves hearings of 1.67 crore electors under scrutiny, including 1.36 crore flagged for logical discrepancies and 31 lakh whose records lack mapping.
The LoP urged the Election Commission to continue the voter list revision exercise with diligence, asserting that the SIR is a routine constitutional process and should not be politicised.
