On Wednesday, the Supreme Court overturned a Karnataka High Court decision dismissing a suit contesting the election of Janata Dal (Secular) Member of Parliament Prajwal Revanna [G Devarajegowda v. Prajwal Revanna @ Prajwal R and ors].
Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and MM Sundresh remanded the case to the High Court, where it will be heard with another plea brought by BJP leader A Manju.
In December of last year, the same Bench of the Supreme Court overturned an order of the High Court dismissing Manju's other election case.
Senior Advocate Pramila Nesargi, who represented the appellant Devarajegowda before the Court, contended that the election case had been dismissed by the High Court due to "procedural irregularities."
She contended that the High Court ignored the reality that by rejecting the election challenge, it risked electing a member of Parliament who did not get the maximum number of legal votes.
The Bench stated in its order that it cannot take a broad view of the pleadings while examining the faults in election petitions. The Court's only concern was whether the petition may be dismissed at the preliminary stage. It held,
"In view of the aforesaid reasoning as well as our judgment in Civil Appeal No.1774/2020 titled “A. Manju v. Prajwal Revanna @ Prajwal R & Ors.” dated 13th December, 2021 relating to the same elected candidate/respondent, we set aside the impugned judgment and remit the matter back to be tried along with other petition as aforesaid leaving all defences open to the respondent expeditiously."
During the hearing before the Karnataka High Court, it was made clear that Revanna would have access to all of her defences.
Devarajegowda was defended by lawyers Balaji Srinivasan, Mohammed Shahrukh, Garima Jain, Pallavi Sengupta, Aakriti Priya, Lakshmi Rao, and Prateek Yadav, in addition to Nesargi.
Revanna was represented by Senior Advocate Mukul Rohatgi and Advocates K Parameshwar, S Sregurupriya, and Prasad Hegde.
Revanna, the grandson of former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda, was accused of lying in his electoral affidavit about his riches. Revanna was proclaimed the winner of the Hassan constituency in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections with 6,76,606 votes, while Manju came in second with 5,35,282 votes.
Manju filed a challenge to the results with the High Court, which dismissed it as "not maintainable" since it was filed without an affidavit, making it insufficient under the 1961 Conduct of Election Rules.
Devarajegowda filed a similar petition, which was similarly dismissed by the High Court.
The Court had held in December while dealing with Manju's petition dismissal, that failure to submit an affidavit in Form 25, as required by Rule 94A of the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961, would not result in the election petition being dismissed, especially in light of the fact that there was a verifying affidavit in support of the election petition.