Mumbai: Delivering a landmark judgment, a three judge bench of the Supreme Court of India (SC), comprising of justices R F Nariman, S Ravindra Bhat and V Ramasubramanian, not only set aside the much controversial narrow victory of former Shiv Sena minister Arjun Khotkar in the 2014 Assembly elections, the bench also fined him and directed him to pay costs to the petition of Rs 1 lakh each to his then defeated Congress rival Kailash Gorantyal and Vijay Chaudhari who had filed the Election petition.
It may be recalled that in the 2014 Assembly elections, Arjun Khotkar had won from the 101 Jalna assembly constituency defeating his nearest Congress rival Kailash Gorantyal by a narrow margin of 296 votes. Arjun Khotkar had then polled 45,078 votes and Kailash Gorantyal had polled 44,782 votes. The Assembly elections in 2014 were held in September and results were declared in October, 2014.
No sooner had the results been announced, an election petition was filed in November 2014 under sections 80 and 81 of the Representation of the Peoples Act, 1951 challenging the election, Gorantyal had then argued that Khotkar had filed his nomination papers well after 3.00 pm on September 27, 2014 and hence ought to have been rejected. However, his contention was rejected by the Returning Officer.
In a stinging observation, the apex court observed that the four sets of nomination papers submitted by Khotkar suffered defects from substantial nature. On the issue of Khotkar submitting the nomination papers well after the stipulated deadline, the judges observed that the “nomination papers ought to have been rejected.”
In an further damning observation, the SC bench observed “nomination paper was improperly accepted and that he could not have contested the elections and result (of Arjun Khotkar) was materially affected need not be proved further.” In short the SC set aside the 2014 assembly election of Arjun Khotkar.
It noted that the findings of the video recordings of September 27, 2014 show that the nomination papers (of Khotkar) were not presented before the Returning Officer before 3.00 pm and that they were presented well after 3.00 pm.
The apex court also came down heavily on the government machinery under the Returning Officer for providing the certificate of evidence under section 65B of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 (IEA) and giving lame excuses to Gorantyal. The petitioner had sought the video recording as evidence and a certificate of evidence.
The Bombay High Court in its judgment in 2017 had then held that the Compact Discs (CDs) produced by the Election Commission of India (ECI) could not be treated as an original record and would therefore, have to be proved by other means of secondary evidence.
The SC in its judgment observed that such evidence is not barred by the provisions of section 65B of IEA. It further pointed out that in the case of Tukaram Dighole versus Manikrao Kokate case, the tape records constitute document within the meaning of the expression of evidence under IEA.
Khotkar in his arguments had challenged the submission of the evidence citing other case judgments over submission and validity of evidence under the IEA, Citing several conflicting evidences, the apex court ruled that section 67C of the IEA be suitably amended for retention of data, its segregation, chain of custody, stamping and record maintenance.
