Mumbai: Prithviraj Chavan, who was chief minister of Maharashtra from 2010 to 2014, filed an election petition before the Bombay High Court a few days ago against his defeat and BJP’s win in the state assembly elections. Chavan, a Congress veteran, lost the Nov 20 election to BJP’s Atul Bhosale by 40,000 votes in the Karad South constituency.
He now seeks orders that Bhosale’s election as MLA be declared void. Chavan is alleging statutory violations and serious irregularities, including issues with the electoral roll and high battery percentage on EVMs during the counting process of the election, which renders the results “void.”
Chavan’s plea, filed through advocate Ashok Paranjpe, managing partner of law firm MDP Associates, seeks to argue that Indian democracy has thrived on a free and fair election process and cites various irregularities in the last state poll.
Chavan, 78, alleged that he several times raised issues of alleged malpractice by supporters of the opposing candidate before the Election Commission. He alleged that the issues, however, were not properly verified nor taken seriously, and thus “the election process was not in a free and fair atmosphere.”
Known for his clean and non-controversial image, Chavan, 78, took over as the state’s chief minister when the Congress was battling allegations of corruption in 2010. Chavan, a graduate of BITS Pilani and the University of California, Berkeley, in mechanical engineering, worked in aircraft instrumentation and designing audio recorders for anti-submarine warfare in the US before returning to India. Prior to becoming the CM of Maharashtra, he served as the minister of state in the Prime Minister’s Office.
The petition is scheduled for hearing on Jan 24 before a bench of Justice Somasekhar Sundaresan.