Section 80

The Rajasthan High Court dismissed in limine a writ petition against a Returning Officer's order accepting a candidate's nomination for the MLA election from Dausa constituency. Improper acceptance or rejection of a nomination is a ground for declaring an election void under Section 100 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, and Section 80 and Article 329(b) allow an election to be questioned only by an election petition (paras 5, 10, 12). The writ court would not examine whether the grounds for acceptance were flimsy or substantial (para 12).

The Supreme Court refused to order paper ballots, VVPAT slips in voters' hands or the counting of every VVPAT slip, finding that the safeguards and data on EVMs gave no basis for the suspicion raised. The voter's right to know that the vote is recorded and counted is not a right to 100% slip counting. It added two safeguards: sealed symbol loading units and engineer checks of burnt memory on request (Khanna J., paras 69, 72, 76).

The Rajasthan High Court dismissed, with costs, an election petition challenging the election of the returned candidate from the Barmer Parliamentary Constituency in 2019. The petitioner, dismissed from the Indian Police Service on 19.02.2019, had filed his nomination without the Election Commission's certificate under Section 33(3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951. The Returning Officer had no option but to reject it, and a certificate issued after scrutiny could not change that (paras 39, 41, 45, 47).