Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court has reportedly allowed BJP leader Kalyan Chaubey to withdraw his petition relating to the Maniktala Assembly seat which he had filed challenging his defeat.
Chaubey had filed a plea to withdraw his application on May 6. Justice Jay Sengupta is learnt to have allowed the withdrawal of the petition. Chaubey reportedly said that the petition was filed because the election to the seat was unfair. There is a demand for polls in that seat and considering that I have withdrawn the petition, he reportedly said.
In September 2021, Chaubey, a BJP candidate from the Maniktala constituency had filed a petition challenging his defeat.
The seat was won by TMC candidate Sadhan Pandey. Pandey had remained a three-time MLA from Maniktala AC. First, in the 2011 Assembly polls, then in 2016 and once again in the 2021 Assembly elections in the state. However, ever since his death in 2022, the seat had remained vacant.
A PIL was filed at the Calcutta High Court seeking bypolls to this seat but it was rejected on the grounds that an election petition case challenging the election procedure in that particular seat during the 2021 Assembly polls, is already pending at the
High Court.
According to the rules, a seat, if falls vacant either because the elected representative has resigned or due to his/her death, needs to go for elections within six months from the date it fell vacant. Even as the petition was withdrawn from the High Court, it was learnt that the case is being separately heard in the Apex Court.