Madhya Pradesh HC rejects Congress MLA's application seeking quashing of plea against his election

Jabalpur: The Madhya Pradesh High Court has dismissed Congress MLA Arif Masood's application seeking rejection of a petition filed by a BJP leader challenging his election in the 2023 state assembly polls.

A single bench of Justice Vivek Agrawal dismissed the application of Masood, a Congress legislator from Bhopal Central, on an election petition filed by BJP's Dhruv Narayan Singh, who accused him of corrupt practices during the polls last year.

The order was passed on August 14.

Masood, in his application, stated that the BJP leader had furnished a photocopy of the election petition instead of putting his signatures on it and did not incorporate the mandatory affidavit backing his accusation.

In his petition, Singh, who lost to Masood in the state polls last year, alleged that the latter had concealed information about a loan in the affidavit submitted to the Election Commission before the polls.

The court noted, "In the present case, the allegation of the petitioner against the respondent (Masood) is that he is under debt, he is a defaulter of a nationalised bank, and his accounts have been declared as non-performing assets. He failed to disclose the extent of his liability to the bank by giving incorrect figures." The bench held that prima facie on the threshold, a plain reading of the petition is not sufficient to discard it.

Masood's application, when examined on the face of the pleadings and the defect pointed out, deserved to be dismissed, the order stated.