Court fines independent candidate for wrongly challenging Sena MLA's election

The Bombay High Court on Wednesday directed an independent candidate who contested last year's Maharashtra Assembly elections from Mumbai's Jogeshwari East seat to deposit Rs 3,50,000 in court as security of costs incurred by the Shiv Sena UBT candidate against whom he filed a petition, challenging his election.

Independent candidate Rohan Satone, who sought the election of Anant B Nar be declared void, has been directed to deposit the amount within two weeks.

Nar won the 2024 elections after he polled 77,044 votes and defeated his nearest rival, Manisha Waikar of the Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde), by a margin of 1,541 votes. Petitioner Satone was among the candidates contesting the elections, who filed a petition on January 4, following which notices were served to other candidates.

Over the course of the hearing, advocate Amit Karande, appearing for Nar, pointed out basic errors in the petition, saying it did not seek the declaration of the returned candidate to be void but that of Waikar, who had lost the election.

"Moreover, the petition was not even in the prescribed format, such as an Election petition is mandatorily required to be accompanied by as many copies as there are respondents mentioned in the petition and every such copy has to be attested by the petitioner to be a true copy," he submitted.

The court then directed a new lawyer's Vakalatnama to be filed within two weeks. Meanwhile, Karande requested the court to impose costs on the petitioner as Nar was entitled to costs incurred by him in contesting the plea.

On June 9, advocate Sholden D’Souza appeared for Satone and sought two weeks' time, arguing he had just been handed over the petition.

Karande opposed it as the Vakalatnama had been filed by the lawyer on May 20.

On June 23, another lawyer, Surbhi Agarwal, appeared for Satone, and while arguing, also sought leniency from court in withdrawing the Election Petition.

The court then considered Karande's application for costs and saw that Nar had incurred Rs 3,50,000 as fees towards his counsel, and asked Satone to pay the same.

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