BENGALURU: Declaring dues as ‘Nil’ and falsifying sources of income, details of businesses run by him and his wife, lands owned by him and their nature in the affidavit during the filing of nomination by Bagepalli Congress MLA S N Subbareddy would amount to ‘’corrupt practice’’ leading to ‘’undue influence’’, falling under the ambit of Section 123(2), and would form a ground for declaring his election void under Section 100(1)(b) of the Representation of the People (RP) Act, 1951, said the Karnataka High Court.
Setting aside the election of Subbareddy as MLA in 2023, the high court also rejected the prayer made by the petitioner and BJP’s defeated candidate, C Muniraju, who questioned the election of Subbareddy, to declare Muniraju as duly elected to fill the seat of Bagepalli constituency.
There are no specific materials as to how many votes more than 19,179 were secured by Subbareddy through corrupt practices. Thus, except for the cryptic averment in the petition, nothing is forthcoming to enable the court to declare Muniraju an elected candidate, the court added. Muniraju lost the election by 19,179 votes.
Also declining the request of Subbareddy’s counsel to stay the verdict to enable filing an appeal before the Supreme Court against this order, the high court directed the Registry to communicate this order to the Speaker of the state legislature and also forward a certified copy to the Election Commissioner as required under Section 103 of RP Act, 1951, read with Rule 19 of Election Petitions Procedure Rules, Karnataka.Justice M G S Kamal delivered the verdict on Monday, partly allowing the petition filed by Muniraju.The court noted that merely because Subbareddy owns and possesses assets worth several hundred crores, it cannot be the reason to condone or exempt the mandatory requirement of true and full disclosure of details.
His possessing a huge amount of wealth cannot be the reason to accept the contention of “substantial compliance”, merely because the value of undisclosed assets and the outstanding amount due to the government are comparatively less or insignificant, the court observed.
False statement or a false declaration, that too made on oath, inherently carries with it corrupt, deceitful, dishonest and fraudulent intent, which once proved, neither requires further probe of its innocence nor the need of testing the same through the lens of substantiality, the court observed.
The court found fault with Subbareddy as he did not disclose businesses, including of liquor, in Bengaluru and the corresponding current account balance relating to Subbareddy and his wife, agricultural land owned by him, the nature of the land and their approximate market value, and false declaration by him that municipal/property tax dues about his properties, his wife and daughter as “Nil’.
Subbareddy claimed that the non-payment of property tax was an inadvertent error committed by his employees, and he had no intention of either suppressing or misleading.