Upholding a Bombay High Court order, the Supreme Court has dismissed an election petition filed against Amit Deshmukh, Maharashtra MLA and son of former Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, alleging he had indulged in “corrupt practices”.
A division bench of Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Ashok Bhushan, dismissed the petition saying “we do not find any legal and valid ground for interference. The special leave petition is dismissed. Consequently, all the pending applications therein are also disposed of.”
The election petition, which was dismissed by the apex court earlier this month, was filed by Annarao Govindrao Patil, who lost the 2014 assembly election to Amit Deshmukh of Congress from Latur constituency by a huge margin.
The total votes polled were 2,03,453, of which Deshmukh (respondent 1) had secured 1,19,653 votes. Anna Patil got only 400 votes and lost his deposit.
Being aggrieved, he filed a petition in the Aurangabad bench of Bombay High Court alleging that Deshmukh had exceeded the limit of expenditure fixed by the Election Commission.
The high court on July 18, 2016, dismissed the petition for want of material facts in support of the allegations of corrupt practices.
The defeated candidate then filed a special leave petition in the Supreme Court challenging the high court order. The apex court too dismissed the election petition saying that there was no ground for the Supreme Court to interfere with the high court order.
Amit Deshmukh filed an affidavit through his lawyers K K Venugopal and Dilip Taur denying the allegations in the election petition and contending that they were baseless.
The petitioner had claimed that the winning candidate was influential as was the son of former Chief Minister of Maharashtra, he had used his influence in the election process and indulged in corrupt practices by spending more than the permissible limit of Rs 28 lakh in the election.
After hearing both sides, the Supreme Court opined that no case had been made out against Deshmukh and dismissed the petition.
( Source – PTI )
