The Rajasthan High Court has dismissed an election petition challenging the victory of Bayana MLA Ritu Banawat in the 2023 State Assembly election, ruling that minor financial omissions in nomination papers cannot be used to overturn an democratic result. However, the court concurrently penalized the lawmaker Rs 1 lakh for deliberately evading court summonses and stalling the legal proceedings for nearly 10 months.
Justice Sudesh Bansal delivered the judgment on June 29 in response to a petition filed by defeated candidate Purushottam Lal under Sections 80 and 81 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951. While upholding the election, the court expressed strong disapproval of the MLA’s conduct during the trial and ordered her to pay the Rs 1 lakh cost to Lal within 30 days.
Lal, who received 689 votes in the 2023 Rajasthan Assembly elections, had challenged Banawat’s victory in the Bayana seat in Bharatpur district, where she won with 1,05,749 votes. In his petition filed on December 8, 2023, Lal argued that Banawat’s election should be declared void because she had allegedly concealed material assets and personal information in her mandatory Form-26 affidavit filed on November 4, 2023.
A central focus of the legal dispute was a Canara Bank account containing only Rs 83 in accumulated interest. The account had been officially closed on November 2, 2023, two days before Banawat submitted her nomination papers.
Justice Bansal accepted the MLA’s explanation, ruling that the non-disclosure of the closed account was neither intentional nor significant. The court pointed out that Banawat had declared overall movable assets worth Rs 8,13,125, a sum that practically accounted for minor residual balances such as the Rs 83 in the Canara Bank account and Rs 1,458 in an SBI account. The court concluded that such negligible omissions did not violate the voters’ right to information or affect the final election outcome in any way.
Court Rejects Allegations Of Asset Concealment
Lal’s petition had raised several other allegations, claiming that Banawat failed to disclose her social media profiles, understated her agricultural land, misreported her husband’s bank account details, and left multiple columns blank in her affidavit. He also accused her of providing incorrect or incomplete details regarding her properties, liabilities, and government accommodation.
The High Court dismissed these objections as insignificant and lacking merit. Citing multiple Supreme Court precedents regarding candidate disclosures—including Association for Democratic Reforms, People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Resurgence India, Krishnamoorthy, Lok Prahari, and Ajmera Shyam v Kova Laxmi—Justice Bansal reiterated that not every minor error, technical defect, or omission in an election affidavit is sufficient to invalidate an election.
Penalty Imposed For Delaying Proceedings
Despite ruling in Banawat’s favor on the election challenge, the court took a strict stance on her failure to engage with the judicial process. The court found that the MLA was fully aware of the pending election petition but deliberately avoided accepting legal summonses, which delayed the trial’s commencement for nearly 10 months.
Justice Bansal wrote that such avoidance of service by an elected representative is unacceptable, justifying the Rs 1 lakh penalty to discourage such conduct in the future.
