Supreme Court To Hear Congress' Petition On Simultaneous Polls To Rajya Sabha
The Supreme Court will tomorrow hear a petition by the Congress to hold simultaneous elections to two Rajya Sabha seats that have fallen vacant after BJP's Amit Shah and Smriti Irani moved to the Lok Sabha. The Election Commission has fixed July 5 for the Rajya Sabha by-elections to the two seats. The petition was filed by the Leader of the Opposition in the Gujarat assembly, Pareshbhai Dhanani. Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi has said holding the elections for the two seats separately would be against the rules. "This would be a mockery of our constitutional ethos. It would be completely contrary to conventions. Whenever there are two seats of a state going vacant, you have elections together. It is obvious to everybody that the purpose of that is to ensure there is a fair exercise of franchise of each MLA," Mr Singhvi said last week. Amit Shah's Rajya Sabha seat was declared vacant on May 28 after he won his first Lok Sabha election from Gandhinagar in Gujarat in last month's election. Smriti Irani's seat was notified as vacant a day later; she defeated Congress president Rahul Gandhi in his constituency Amethi in Uttar Pradesh. The notifications were separate because while Amit Shah, the BJP president and Union Home Minister, was declared winner on May 23, the day of the national election results, Smriti Irani's result was announced only the next day. Rubbishing the allegation, the BJP said the "Congress has become a lie-spreading machine". "They are misleading the people. By-polls for Rajya Sabha always takes place separately," a BJP leader said last week.
