S Jaishankar, in his affidavit, says that the voting procedure adopted did not violate any laws. (ARCHIVE)
New Delhi:
Chancellor S Jaishankar has defended his election to the Rajya Sabha of Gujarat in a reply to the Supreme Court, stating that there was no violation of the law.
Jaishankar’s election in 2019 to one of two seats vacated by Union ministers Amit Shah and Smriti Irani had been challenged by Gaurav Hemantbhai Pandya, the losing congressional candidate.
Mr. Jaishankar, in his affidavit, says that the voting procedure adopted by the Election Commission did not violate any laws.
The congressional leader’s appeal “was based on a misrepresentation of the facts and on a failure to understand the correct legal position,” said the foreign minister.
Mr. Pandya’s appeal was not accepted by the Gujarat High Court, after which he went to the Supreme Court.
The polls were conducted in May 2019 for the seats vacated by Amit Shah and Smriti Irani after winning the Lok Sabha elections. The polls were carried out by separate votes and the BJP won both seats.
Congress maintains that it would have won one of the seats if the voting had been held together on the proportional representation system through a single transferable vote. In it, legislators list their order of preference for each candidate. The candidate who is the first choice for the most voters wins. The vote of each legislator is counted only once.
The BJP had 100 legislators and the Congress had 71 in the Gujarat assembly. As the elections were held separately, a candidate needed only 50 percent of the votes (88) to win.
Taking the vote separately was “illegal and in violation of the constitution,” says the congressional candidate in his petition.
But according to the government, it has been a consistent practice for the Election Commission “since 2009” to issue separate notifications for secondary elections to the Rajya Sabha.
The Supreme Court had requested the response of the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
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