Shivani Gadhavi
Published On: February 11, 2022 at 17:29 IST
The Calcutta High Court on February 8, 2022, while hearing a Plea of a person who had alleged that the Respondents in the case had issued fake caste certificates for contesting in elections, imposed a Fine of INR 50,000 on the Petitioner for concealing the fact he was also a contesting candidate for the Elections.
The Calcutta High Court Bench comprising of Chief Justice Prakash Shrivastava and Justice Rajarshi Bhardwaj was hearing a Petition, wherein it was alleged by the Petitioner that the Respondent, Prasenjit Nag, had contested as a candidate in the Bidhannagar Municipal Polls by submitting fake caste certificates, as the aforementioned constituency is specifically reserved for people belonging to Scheduled Castes.
In this regard, the State Election Commission (one of the Respondents) pointed out that the Petitioner himself was a contesting candidate for Municipal Polls and this important fact was concealed by the Petitioner while submitting the Petition against the Respondents.
The Bench in this regard stated that, “A document has been produced relating to the proceedings of scrutiny of nomination paper of Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation, 2022 which reveals that the petitioner is one of the independent candidates for the election.”
The High Court expressed disappointment and observed that, “The petitioner has suppressed this fact in the petition that he is one of the candidates contesting election of concerned municipal corporation. This amounts to gross suppression of fact and the present writ petition is liable to be dismissed with costs on the sole ground of suppressing the fact.”
Hence, while dismissing the Plea of the Petitioner, the Bench stated that, “we dismiss this writ petition by imposing costs of 50,000/- which is to be deposited by the petitioner with the Legal Services Authority within a period of two weeks from today.”