New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday reserved its order on a plea seeking the disqualification of Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis allegedly for not disclosing in his 2014 election affidavit two cases that were pending against him then relating to alleged cheating and defamation.
A bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, Justice Deepak Gupta and Justice Anir-uddha Bose reserved the order as senior counsel Mukul Rohatgi told the court that if CM in his affidavit filed along with the nomination papers, mentions all the cases except two, would that inadvertent omission attract disqualification. “Of the 25 cases, I disclose 23, forgetting 2. Does forgetting 2 cases would bring me in the pale of Sec-tion 125 A of the Repre-sentation of Peoples Act,” Mr Rohatgi told the court admitting that there was a slip in the disclosure of two cases.
Section 125A of the Representation of Peoples Act provides for Penalty for filing false affidavit. Earlier senior counsel Vivek Tankha appe-aring for the petitioner Satish Ukey — a lawyer by profession — told the court that non-disclosure of two cases amounted to concealment of information and thus attracted Section 125A.
