EC may fix new dates for JD polls

NEW DELHI, June 12: With the Election Commission stating that it would not have any objection if a new date was fixed for holding the Janat...

NEW DELHI, June 12: With the Election Commission stating that it would not have any objection if a new date was fixed for holding the Janata Dal presidential election, Delhi High Court today reserved its judgment in the three poll related cases challenging the verdict of the June 7 court order.

The two-judge division bench comprising justice Cyriac Joseph and justice Anil Dev Singh reserved the order after hearing the arguments of the three parties Janata Dal president Laloo Prasad Yadav, party national returning officer P K Samantaray and assistant returning officer B K Prasad and JD MP; M A A Fatmi. However, the bench did not fix the date of the verdict.

Arguing the case, counsel for Samantaray and Prasad, R K Anand contended that all powers relating to the appointment and arrangements of the organisational polls in the party was given to the working president, Sharad Yadav by the national executive.

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He said as all powers regarding the conduct of polls were with Sharad Yadav, Laloo could not exercise any powers as far as organisational polls were concerned as it would be a supersession of national executive’s decision.

About the questionable manner in which Prasad was elected to the National Council from Punjab, Anand accepted that his client was included in the state list in the place of one Suresh Berry, whose name was deleted after it was found that he was a partner in a liquor firm. Anand said that party provisions prohibited people like Berry from getting elected to the National Council.

He also clarified that the replacement of the names was not done by the national returning officer, but by the state returning officer. Anand however, avoided a reply about the election of Samantaray to the national council from Delhi. When the court asked Rakesh Dwivedi, counsel for Laloo Yadav, how his client could nominate all the council members from Bihar, Dwivedi replied, “the workers have faith in their leaders”. In this context, he referred to Karnataka where nominations were withdrawn and the state party president was given the right to elect the members he wanted.Refuting Dwivedi’s charge that the returning officer had no right to decide the poll venue, Anand replied that the returning officer had been conferred all powers, including fixing of the poll venue, by the party constitution. He said the party president enjoyed all powers of the national executive when the plenary or the special session was on. But for rest of the period, the powers were only with the national executive and nobody else, he added. This interpretation of the powers of the president evoked a debate between the counsels for various parties with the bench also unsatisfied with Anand’s interpretation.

About the issue of having the poll at one place, Justice Joseph said, “As far as I see, the idea behind the fixing of Patna as poll venue was to have the polling and the election of the national council members at one place.”