Bhopal: The Delhi high court on Friday quashed a petition by Madhya Pradesh parliamentary affairs minister Narottam Mishra challenging Election Commission’s decision to disqualify him for three years in the paid news case. A specially constituted single-judge bench of Justice Indermeet Kaur also rejected his plea to vote in the presidential election on Monday.
The high court had on Thursday reserved its judgement after hearing day-long arguments on behalf of Mishra, the Election Commission of India and Congress leader Rajendra Bharti on whose complaint the poll panel had disqualified the BJP leader.
Now, unless a higher court intervenes and offers relief to Mishra, he can’t cast his vote in presidential election. Mishra was pinning his hopes on legal relief ahead of the election on July 17 and had approached Supreme Court seeking his right to vote. But the apex court had transferred this case to Delhi HC and asked it to adjudicate expeditiously.
Responding to the HC verdict, Mishra told newsmen on Friday, “I honour the verdict. I would consult legal experts and would move a double bench of the HC or the Supreme Court to get justice.” However, Mishra has only two days to act, including Sunday, if he still wants to cast his vote on Monday.
EC on the complaint of Congress leader Rajendra Bharti had nullified Mishra’s election in 2008 and disqualified him from contesting any election for three years. Bharti, in the backdrop of Friday’s verdict, said that all the doors were closed for Mishra.
Mishra had earlier moved the apex court challenging a Madhya Pradesh High Court order refusing an urgent hearing to his interim prayer to allow him to vote in the presidential poll.
While disqualifying Mishra from contesting elections for three years following a complaint against him, the poll panel had used some strong words against paid news, calling it a "cancerous menace" that is assuming "alarming proportions" in the electoral landscape.
His election from the Datia Assembly constituency also stands void. Mishra, who won from Datia assembly constituency, is the minister for water resources and public relations and the chief spokesperson of the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government.
Bharti, the main complainant in the case, had first sent a complaint to the EC about eight years back in 2009. The poll panel order had said that all the 42 news items that had appeared in five Hindi dailies were "extremely biased in favour of" Mishra.
It had said that its findings had also strengthened the conclusion that he had "knowingly participated or took advantage of the expenditure on such advertisements" that had appeared as news in the publication.
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