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The BJP on Monday won its first seat in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections unopposed as Congress Surat candidate Nilesh Kumbhani was disqualified owing to alleged discrepancies in his nomination papers, while eight other nominees withdrew from the fray. It is rare for a Lok Sabha seat to be won unopposed, and the first such win for the BJP.
The Congress has cried foul over the rejection of the nomination papers of both Kumbhani and its substitute candidate, Suresh Padsala, on the ground of “discrepancies in the verification of signatures of their proposers”.
So, who are proposers and what do Election Commission (EC) rules say with regard to grounds of rejection?
A candidate in the election race must have a proposer. According to EC rules, a proposer must be a registered elector of the Assembly or parliamentary constituency for which he or she endorses a candidate’s nomination. The nomination papers of the candidate must be signed by the proposer as well as the candidate for them to be deemed valid.
As per the Representation of the People Act, 1951, a candidate of a recognised state or national party needs one proposer, while an Independent or the candidate of an unrecognised party needs 10.
The EC allows a candidate to file up to four nominations for the same constituency, to be safe in case errors are spotted in any.
A proposer is mandated to sign at the designated part in a nomination paper. He or she can sign more than one nomination form for the same candidate as well as for different candidates.
The candidate and the proposer are mandated to be physically present while nomination papers are submitted to the Returning Officer (RO). The RO has to be satisfied that the name and electoral roll number of the candidate as well as the proposer match with EC records.
The RO can reject a nomination form if the papers are not submitted on time or are submitted by anyone other than the candidate or the proposer. A nomination can also be rejected if the RO deems the signatures on the papers are not genuine or if the affidavit is incomplete.
Kumbhani had filed three nomination forms for the Surat Lok Sabha seat, to apparently be on the safe side, with a different proposer for each – Jagdish Savaliya (his brother-in-law), Dhruvin Dhamelia (his nephew) and Ramesh Polra (his business partner).
Congress sources said he also arranged the dummy candidate who would substitute him in case his papers got rejected, Suresh Padsala, an acquaintance who had worked for him when he was a corporator. The proposer for Padsala, Vishal Koladiya, was reportedly also picked up by Kumbhani.
The poll officers found discrepancies in the signatures of all four of the proposers.
Earlier this month, the candidate of the Samajwadi Party (SP) from Khajuraho in Madhya Pradesh, Meera Deepnarayan Yadav, got rejected as she failed to sign at the designated spot on the form and allegedly attached an old electoral roll. The Khajuraho seat had been left by the Congress for the SP as part of their INDIA alliance. The Congress and SP have declared their support for a Forward Bloc candidate from the seat now.
