The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a petition filed by Saritha Nair challenging Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s election as the Wayanad lawmaker in the Lok Sabha elections held last year. A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India SA Bobde also asked Saritha Nair, whose nomination was rejected by the returning officers, to pay a fine of Rs one lakh for filing a “frivolous petition.”Nair was barred from contesting the parliamentary polls as she was convicted in the solar scam case in the southern state with a sentence of three years. Nair’s nomination papers were rejected under Section 8(3) of the Representation of People Act, 1951 which prescribed for disqualification on account of conviction and sentencing in a criminal case. She later obtained a stay in the case, which, however, was not considered by the returning officers.Nair had moved the top court against the October 31, 2019, decision of Kerala High Court by which her election petitions challenging the Lok Sabha polls in Wayanad and Ernakulam also were dismissed. She had earlier approached the Kerala high court over the election officers’ move stopping her from contesting the elections.The high court had held that the stay was on the sentence and not on conviction and hence her plea was rejected. “It was clear from the relief sought in the appeal petition that Nair had only sought suspension of the sentence and not the suspension of conviction,” the court had said.Gandhi had won Kerala’s Wayanad seat — the second seat he contested in the 2019 polls — with a margin of 431,770 votes. He defeated runner up PP Suneer of the Communist Party of India, who secured 274,597 votes, while Gandhi got 706,367 votes.
