The Gujarat High Court has issued a summons to Mukesh Dalal, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP from Surat, in response to petitions challenging his unopposed victory in the recent Lok Sabha elections. Justice JC Doshi has directed Dalal to provide a response by August 9 after the matter was heard on July 25.
Dalal’s victory was declared on April 22, the final day for withdrawal of nominations, following the rejection of the nomination of Congress candidate Nilesh Kumbhani and the withdrawal of other candidates. This unusual situation left Dalal as the sole contestant, marking him the first candidate in the past 12 years to win a Lok Sabha seat unopposed.
The petitions, lodged by four voters from the Surat constituency who are also members of the Congress party, challenge the legality of the Surat collector and returning officer’s decision to disqualify Kumbhani’s nomination. The contention focuses on the rejection based on the alleged discrepancies in the signatures of Kumbhani’s proposers.
The petitioners argue that Kumbhani’s proposers had initially declared in an application before the deputy collector their intention to sign as proposers on his nomination form. This declaration was made while they applied for certificates verifying them as voters of the constituency, a necessary condition for proposers. They further contested that verifying signatures does not fall within the collector’s duties, emphasizing that a national party like Congress would not lack proposers.
The rejection of Kumbhani’s nomination was based on affidavits from the proposers themselves, who later denied having signed the nomination papers. This also led to the invalidation of his dummy candidate, Suresh Padsala’s nomination for similar reasons.
Also Read
District Collector and election officer Saurabh Pardhi officially handed the election certificate to Dalal during the final hour of the nomination withdrawal period. This scenario has sparked a broader debate about the electoral process and the scrutiny involved in nomination procedures.
