Hyderabad: Former Union minister Sarvey Satyanarayana on Tuesday moved an election petition before the Hyderabad High Court, seeking the election of Pasunoori Dayakar as Member of Parliament from the Warangal (SC) constituency be set aside. Mr Dayakar of the TRS had won the election, defeating his opponents, including Mr Satyanarayana of the Congress, by a margin of over 4 lakh votes in the Warangal Lok Sabha bypoll held on November 21, 2015.
Mr Dayakar polled 6,15,403 votes and Mr Satyanarayana had secured about 1.56 lakh votes and stood in second place. The BJP-TD combine's Pagidipati Devaiah polled 1,30,178 votes. The bypoll was necessitated following the resignation of Kadiyam Srihari after he was made Deputy Chief Minister.
Mr Satyanarayana submitted that Mr Dayakar was not eligible to contest the election as he was holding a contract with the Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd as LPG distributor for which the TRS candidate and his wife are the authorised signatories as on the date of filing of nomination papers.
“Suppressing the above fact, the TRS member categorically stated in the nomination papers that the profession or occupation of his spouse was ‘housewife’ which is a false statement and hence the TRS candidate invites disqualification under Section 9-A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951,” Mr Satyanarayana’s petition said.
The petitioner alleged that the returning officer-cum-district collector was aware of the subsistence of the distributorship contract and purposefully did not raise any objection and accepted the nomination papers under influence of the latter. He said that this act amounts to a corrupt practice under Section 123 of the Representation of People Act, 1951.
Mr Satyanarayana also alleged that Mr Dayakar resorted to corrupt practises to secure more votes in the election. While urging the Court to declare the election of Mr Dayakar as void, he prayed the Court to declare him as duly elected from the Warangal Lok Sabha constituency.
