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Ajay Arjun Singh v. Sharadendu Tiwari & Others

Civil Appeal · Neutral citation not assigned (Civil Appeal No. 8254 of 2016)Decided 23 Aug 2016
Civil Appeal No. 8254 of 2016
Justice J. Chelameswar · Justice Abhay Manohar Sapre

Background

The appellant was the returned candidate from the 76-Churhat Assembly constituency in Madhya Pradesh's 2013 General Elections, having won by a margin of 19,356 votes as an Indian National Congress candidate. The first respondent, a losing candidate, filed an election petition challenging the result, after which the appellant applied under Order VI Rule 16 of the Code of Civil Procedure to have several paragraphs of that petition struck off as frivolous and vexatious. The Madhya Pradesh High Court dismissed this application, prompting the appellant to approach the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Court examined the scope of Order VI Rule 16 CPC, which allows striking out pleading matter that is unnecessary, scandalous, frivolous, vexatious, or an abuse of process. Going through the disputed paragraphs one by one, including allegations about a "Shadow Expense Register" and the use of chartered helicopter flights for campaigning, the Court found most of them raised triable issues properly left for trial, except for one: paragraph 14M, alleging undisclosed election expenditure on charter flights between Bhopal and Sidhi. Since those flights were outside the appellant's own constituency and he was an acknowledged "star campaigner" required to campaign state-wide, the Court held that expenditure could not be counted as his election expenditure, and struck out that one paragraph. The Court also criticized the appellant's litigation strategy of filing successive preliminary-objection applications instead of raising all objections at once, warning High Courts to dismiss such later, piecemeal applications in limine given the six-month statutory timeline for deciding election petitions. The appeal was therefore only partly allowed.

Lesson Learnt

In election petitions, courts will only strike out specific allegations that are clearly outside the scope of the candidate's own election expenditure or otherwise abusive: vague claims of frivolousness won't get an entire petition gutted; and litigants should raise all their preliminary objections together at the earliest opportunity rather than filing them one after another, since courts actively discourage tactics that delay time-bound election adjudication.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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