HC sets aside election of BJP's Bhandara MLA

The Nagpur bench of Bombay high court on Wednesday declared the election of BJP's Sakoli (Bhandara in Nagpur division) MLA Rajesh Kashiwar as 'void', in a major setback to the ruling party. The verdict was stayed for a month to allow Kashiwar to file a statutory appeal under Section 116A of the Representation of People's Act, 1951.
Kashiwar had defeated petitioner Sevak Waghaye-Patil in the polls on October 15, 2014.The petitioner pointed out that Kashiwar had entered into contracts with government and these were subsisting on September 27, 2014, which was the last date of filing of nominations. The contracts were awarded by PWD, with which Kashiwar was registered as a class IV contractor. On October 20, 2014, he had applied to the PWD executive engineer for cancellation of his registration, which was approved two days later. "Once it's found that contracts entered into by the respondent with government were subsisting on the last date of nominations, the disqualification under Section 9A of the Act would operate. As a consequence of this finding, the respondent's election is declared void," Justice Atul Chandurkar ruled.
BJP's Gadchiroli MLA Devrao Holi was disqualified by HC in January last year and BJP's Katol MLA Ashish Deshmukh had resigned from his post recently.