Supreme Court stays disqualification of JD(S) leader Prajwal Revanna as MP
The grandson of former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda faces charges of providing wrong information in his affidavit filed with the Election Commission.
The Supreme Court on Monday stayed a Karnataka High Court order to disqualify the election of Janata Dal (Secular) leader Prajwal Revanna as a Member of Parliament from the Hassan constituency in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, reported Bar and Bench.
A bench of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra stated that Prajwal will be allowed to vote on the floor of the House and be part of committees to which he has been nominated as a member. However, he will not be able to draw any allowance as a legislator.
Prajwal, the grandson of former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda, will also be able to contest in the next Lok Sabha elections in 2024, the Supreme Court said in its interim order.
The Karnataka High Court had earlier this month declared Prajwal’s election as null and void for allegedly providing false information in his election affidavit, according to Live Law. The judgment came on a petition filed by A Manju, who had contested against Revanna in 2019 on a Bharatiya Janata Party ticket.
The allegations against Prajwal included non-disclosure of material facts, wrong disclosure of property assets, evading taxes, proxy voting and expenditures crossing the limit prescribed by the Election Commission.
The High Court held that his nomination paper was wrongly accepted by the returning officer. It had also issued notices to his father, HD Revanna, and his brother, Suraj Revanna, on charges of involvement in corrupt practices to aid Prajwal.
The court also rejected a prayer to declare Manju as the winning candidate after finding that he too was involved in corrupt practices.
Since the 2019 elections, Manju has switched to Janata Dal (Secular) and won the Arakalgud constituency on the party’s ticket in the Karnataka Assembly elections held earlier this year. The High Court had called this “unfortunate”.