New Delhi, December 16
In a setback to Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, the Supreme Court today directed the Punjab and Haryana High Court to hear fresh a petition challenging his election to the Assembly on the ground that two senior civil and police officers of the state government had actively campaigned for him.
“We hold that the High Court was wrong in dismissing the election petition on the ground that material facts had not been set out in it and the petition did not disclose a cause of action. The order passed by the High Court, therefore deserves to be quashed and set aside,” a Bench of Chief Justice Y K Sabharwal, Mr Justice C K Thakker and Mr Justice P K Balasubramanyan said.
The petition was filed by Harkirat Singh, an elector from the Patiala constituency from where Amarinder Singh was elected, alleging that the then Information and Public Relations Department Joint Director Bharat Inder Singh Chahal and Patiala SP Gurnam Singh Mehra had openly campaigned for him during February 2002 polls in violation of the election code of conduct.
Harkirat Singh, in his appeal against the High Court order, had quoted extensively from the press conference of the then Punjab Chief Electoral Officer G S Cheema’s press conference of February 4, 2002 at Chandigarh that “Chahal had actively participated” in the election process.
Allowing the appeal mainly on the ground that in the present case “material facts” of corrupt practice said to have been adopted by the respondent, had been set out in the petition with full particulars in respect of Chahal’s assistance to him, the apex court said “The High Court, in our considered view, stepped into prohibited area of appreciating the evidence by entering into merits of the case which would be permissible only at the stage of the trial of the election petition not at the time of considering its maintainability.”
Remitting the matter back to the High Court to decide it on merits, the Bench asked it to dispose of the matter on priority and expeditiously keeping in view the fact that nearly four years have passed after the elections.
Citing its rulings in various judgments on election issues, the apex court said it had been clearly laid down that taking or obtaining assistance of government officials in the elections fell within the definition of “various heads of corrupt practice”.
It was therefore, required to be examined on merit whether there existed any material facts about Amarinder Singh taking assistance of government officials or they had abetted in the process of his election by prohibited means, it said.
“It has been expressly stated as to how Chahal, who was a gazetted officer of class-I in Government of Punjab, assisted the respondent by
doing several acts... It has also been stated as to how police officer Mehra, who was holding the post of SP, helped him by organising a meeting and by distributing posters” in the petition.“It was also alleged that correct and proper accounts of election expenses have not been maintained by the respondent,” the court in its order recorded, but it clarified that the allegations that Amarinder Singh had projected himself as “Maharaja of Patiala” during the election to influence the voters, had not been pressed by the counsel of the petitioner during the hearing of the appeal.
“The High Court, in our opinion, was wholly unjustified in entering into the correctness or otherwise of facts stated and allegations made in the petition and in rejecting it holding that it did not state material facts and thus did not disclose a cause of action,” the Supreme Court said, adding in view of these reasons, the appeal “deserves to be allowed”.
