Mumbai, In the Rajya Sabha elections, two NCP MLAs could not cast their votes in the midst of a close fight. The jailed MLAs Anil Deshmukh and Nawab Malik were also denied bail by the High Court to cast their votes. Earlier, the trial court had refused bail to both of them for one day to cast their votes. Both the leaders appealed in the High Court against the decision of the lower court, which the court refused to hear.
The court has refused to hear the application filed by Nawab Malik’s lawyer. With this it was decided that Anil Deshmukh and Nawab would not be able to vote in the Rajya Sabha. Significantly, the Rajya Sabha elections were held on Friday, in which seven candidates were in the fray for six seats. The BJP had fielded a third candidate, due to which voting had come to a standstill.
Jailed NCP leader Nawab Malik had said in the petition that he should either be released from custody on bond or be allowed to accompany the police to Vidhan Bhavan for voting. To this, a single bench of Justice PD Naik said that though Malik did not mention the word ‘bail’ in the petition, his plea meant only to grant bail, so he should appeal challenging the special court’s decision. , which on Thursday refused to grant temporary bail to Malik.
The High Court said that it does not want to set a wrong example by accepting Malik’s plea. Nawab Malik’s lawyer Amit Desai had said that he is not seeking bail, but is demanding the right to vote. He had said that this voting is important in the current environment. Desai said he would not have sought permission to vote had the fight not been close, but the court refused to grant relief to him.
The second minister of the state, Anil Deshmukh, has also filed his petition in the High Court through the jail. He had also sought exemption to vote in the Rajya Sabha elections as an interim relief, but like Malik, he too did not get relief.
