By IANS
New Delhi : The Supreme Court Tuesday restored the Karnataka assembly seat of Congress legislator Y. Nagappa, suspending a Karnataka High court order that had set aside his election in April 2004 on grounds of alleged malpractices.
A bench comprising Justices B.N. Agarwal, P.P. Naolekar and D.K. Jain also issued notices among others to Karnataka-based advocate S. Prasanna Kumar, on whose petition the high court had set aside Nagappa’s election last week.
The court stayed the high court’s order on a petition by Nagappa.
Arguing for Nagappa, Ramchandra Kalal contended that the high court had set aside his client’s election despite finding no evidence of any electoral malpractice as alleged in the petition, which was also supported by Janata Dal candidate H. Shivapa, who had emerged runner-up in the 2004 assembly election.
Nagappa, the official candidate of the Indian National Congress Party, had won the election by a margin of 569 votes from the Harihar assembly constituency in Davengere district of the state.
Kalal said the high court set aside Nagappa’s election despite ordering a recounting of votes polled as well as of all the postal votes and declaring the result afresh.
Kalal agued that the high court had ordered the counting even though the petitioners had failed to make a strong case for the same.
Kalal also challenged the high court order on the ground that while ordering a recount, it had ignored the fact that at the time of declaration of result no one had sought any recounting of votes, which is a statutory condition.