The Gujarat High Court on Friday asked the court's registrar general to carry out a probe into the issue of missing documents from the case file in the election petition filed by BJP's Balvantsinh Rajput against the Rajya Sabha poll victory of Congress leader Ahmed Patel.
Notably, the single judge bench of Justice Bela Trivedi discovered the missing documents on Thursday and was miffed on the same. Eventually, the court ordered the registry to carry out the probe and submit a report explaining the movement of the case file in the registry and who are the persons responsible for the missing documents.
According to Patel's advocate, PS Champaneri, the original election petition of Rajput along with annexures, as well as the summons issued to Patel were missing. Notably, the court gave a week's time to the registrar general to carry out the probe in the case of missing documents and postponed the trial in the case till February 8.
The trial in the election petition started recently after Patel failed to get any relief from the Gujarat High Court and the SC from facing the trial in the election petition.
Interestingly, during the arguments in the election application filed by Patel challenging the maintainability of Rajput's plea, the Congress leader's advocate Kapil Sibbal had argued that Rajput's plea was liable to be rejected ab-initio as it was not in the right format as prescribed for election petition. He had then submitted that the election petition moved by Rajput was not valid as it did not bear his signatures and shall not be construed as the 'true copy' as mandatory under the law.
Sibbal had then cited Section 81 (3) of the Representation of the People Act to drive home his point. The section states: "Every election petition shall be accompanied by as many copies thereof as there are respondents mentioned in the petition and every such copy shall be attested by the petitioner under his own signature to be a true copy of the petition".
