Hyderabad: In a setback to BRS Jubilee Hills MLA Maganti Gopinath, the Telangana High Court dismissed his request to reject two petitions challenging his election in the 2023 Assembly polls. The High Court noted that the documents submitted along with the petitions were fit to be contested and it required a full trial.Justice K. Lakshman of the High Court was dealing with two interim applications filed by Gopinath, who requested the court to reject the two separate election petitions, one filed by Congress candidate Mohammed Azharuddin and the other by Naveen Yadav, a voter from the Jubilee Hills constituency. They had filed the petitions in 2024 seeking to declare the election of Gopinath as void.Azharuddin alleged there was tampering of EVMs; there were no seals; and seals were in a tampered condition in respect of 26 EVMs. Therefore, counting of these EVMs could not be taken into consideration for declaring the result.Azharuddin also brought to the notice of the court that he, his election agents and other candidates reported to the returning officer the issues of irregularities, malfunctioning and replacement of EVMs, mismatching of control unit number, ballot unit number and VVPATS with Form 17C against the forms supplied to his agents.Several EVMs were reported to be defective and had been replaced without securing consent from election agents. The returning officer did not follow due process by stopping the counting process in respect of Booths No. 130, 143, 152, 138, Azharuddin said.Many electronic units were found defective and 13 EVM numbers did not matched with Form 17C that was signed by polling agents. The number of votes polled in each booth did not match with Form 17C.Naveen Yadav, in his separate petition, complained of tampering of EVMs and also that Gopinath had not disclosed details regarding his wife and her properties. Gopinath also did not disclose details about his major son Prathimuna in the nomination form, particularly the affidavit filed in Form 26. Claiming that Gopinath had intentionally suppressed details, he submitted photographs of Gopinath’s wedding.Yadav also complained that Gopinath had provided wrong details about his educational qualifications. In the affidavit in Form 26 for the 2014 Assembly elections, he had mentioned his educational qualification as ‘degree’, whereas in the 2018 and 2023 polls he had mentioned ‘Intermediate’.Refuting the contentions of the petitioners, Gopinath requested the court to reject the election petitions on the grounds that the Azharuddin’s election petition lacked cause of action. He stated that the averments were vague and there was no identification of which EVMs at which polling booths were irregular or defective.The court did not agree with the contentions of Gopinath and opined that the petitioners had submitted documents to substantiate their contentions , which are triable issues. Hence, rejecting the election petitions at the threshold was impermissible.
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