SC agrees to open court hearing on review petition of Fadnavis

Tribune News Service
New Delhi, January 24

The Supreme Court will hear in open court former Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’s petition seeking review of its verdict setting aside the clean chit given to him by the Bombay High Court over allegations of non-disclosure of certain criminal cases pending against him with regard to the 2014 assembly polls.

 A Bench three-judge Bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra on Thursday ordered the matter to be posted for hearing.

In his election affidavit filed in 2014, Fadnavis had failed to disclose the pendency of two criminal cases against him. The two cases of alleged cheating and forgery were filed against Fadnavis in 1996 and 1998 but charges have not been framed.

In a setback to Fadnavis the Supreme Court had on October 1 last year quashed the Bombay High Court’s verdict paving the way for his prosecution for not disclosing two pending criminal cases in his 2014 affidavit.

 “We unhesitatingly arrive at the conclusion that the order of the trial court upheld by the high court by the impugned judgment and order dated May 3, 2018 is legally not tenable and the same deserves to be set aside which we hereby do,” it had said.

While allowing petitioner Satish Ukey’s petition challenging a Bombay High Court’s May 3, 2018, order dismissing his petition, the Bench had taken into account the “clear averment” made in the complaint against Fadnavis that he had “knowledge of the two cases against him”, which he did not mention in his affidavit filed with his nomination papers.

Earlier, his counsel had admitted that Fadanvis could not furnish details of two of the 25 cases pending against him but insisted that it didn’t amount to an electoral offence under Section 125A of the Representation of People Act, 1951.

The top court had said the issue had to be decided during trial.

The high court had dismissed Ukey’s petition that had sought annulment of Fadanavis’s election to the Maharashtra Assembly for alleged non-disclosure of all pending criminal cases against him.

Ukey had contended that the chief Minister was required to disclose all pending cases against him under Section 33A (1) of the Representation of People’s Act of 1951. He alleged that there were two cases pending in a Nagpur court. The non-disclosure of these two pending criminal cases amounted to violation of Section 125A of the RP Act, 1951, and constituted an offence in itself, he contended.