The court gave Bharti 10 days to file a corrected petition and posted the matter for further hearing on August 14.
When Bharti’s lawyer urged the court to serve the respondents with the petition, the judge said, “There are too many errors. Correct the petition first. I cannot serve it this way. I will simply adjourn it. Please file a corrected petition.”
Both Bharti and Swaraj contested for the Lok Sabha seat from New Delhi.
While Bharti got 3,74,815 votes, Swaraj got 4,53,185 votes according to the electoral officer, the statement said.
The petition, filed under sections 80 and 81 of the Representation of the People Act, alleged corrupt practices by Swaraj, her election agent and others.
The suit also claims that former AAP minister Raaj Kumar Anand contested the elections on a Bahujan Samaj Party ticket to help Swaraj by reducing the vote share. Later on July 10, he joined the BJP, the suit said.
He said Anand was a minister in the Aam Aadmi Party government in Delhi and was active in the Bharti campaign till April 9 and suddenly quit the party on April 10.
On election day, the petitioner was shocked during his visits to booths across the constituency to see that Swaraj booth agents were holding pamphlets displaying his ballot number, photo, electoral symbol and photograph of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and “were showing the same to the voters who had lined up at the booth to vote and asking them to vote for ticket number 1,” the petition stated.
“…such an act certainly qualifies as a corrupt practice. This was also reported to respondent No. 3 (electoral officer), but all in vain,” he alleged.
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