Seizing on a remark made by Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah about his loss in the 1991 Lok Sabha polls due to “vote fraud”, the BJP has mounted an attack on the Congress party’s campaign against “vote chori” and alleged collusion of the BJP and the Election Commission (EC) to manipulate elections.
Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, has been spearheading this campaign, currently undertaking “Voter Adhikar Yatra” (voter rights march) in Bihar against “vote theft” and the EC’s special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the state slated for the Assembly polls in November this year.
Addressing an event in Bengaluru on August 28, held to felicitate former state advocate general and Siddaramaiah’s friend Ravi Varma Kumar on completion of 50 years as a lawyer, the CM reminisced about Ravi Varma’s handling of his case following his defeat in the 1991 Lok Sabha polls from the Koppal constituency.
“In 1991, I contested the parliament polls (from Koppal as a Janata Dal candidate) and lost. Let us consider it a loss due to fraud. I got an election petition filed through him (Ravi Varma). Havanur (L G Havanur) also presented arguments and he (Ravi Varma) did the drafting. He (Ravi Varma) did it without taking a single rupee as his legal fee,” Siddaramaiah recalled.
“Normally, lawyers do not conduct cases for free. He (Ravi Varma) did it as a friend for me. He also does it for other people who are poor Dalits, backward castes and minorities. He should serve the people for long as a lawyer,” the CM added.
The BJP did not lose any time in using Siddaramaiah’s “vote fraud” reference to his 1991 loss to a Congress candidate, to target the Congress’s “vote theft” campaign.
Senior Karnataka BJP leader and LoP in the Assembly, R Ashok, said, “Siddaramaiah said that there was vote rigging by the Congress in the past, and now he himself has joined the fight (Rahul’s Yatra in Bihar). How will he fight in favor of Congress? This proves that the Congress campaign and its allegations against BJP are false.” He also sought the Congress’s explanation on the CM’s remarks.
How did 1991 Koppal LS polls play out?
In the 1991 Lok Sabha elections, the polling in the Koppal seat was held on June 15, 1991 in the aftermath of the May 21, 1991 assassination of former Prime Minister and Congress leader Rajiv Gandhi. Subsequently, the counting of votes was done on June 16 and the results were announced on June 17.
In Koppal then, Congress candidate Anwari Basavaraj Patil – who had been disqualified in the previous (9th) Lok Sabha for his defection – defeated the then Janata Dal nominee Siddaramaiah by 11,197 votes, garnering 2,41,176 votes (42% vote share) as against the latter’s 2,29,979 votes (40% vote share).
The BJP’s Achyut Devaraya finished at third place with 48,670 votes (8.5% vote share) and the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha’s D S Kalmath got 15,327 votes (3% vote share). As many as 22,243 votes were declared invalid.
With Koppal being dominated by the backward class Kuruba – the community Siddaramaiah belongs to – and the Janata Dal (which Siddaramaiah quit in 2005 to join the Congress) enjoying a base among minorities, which hold political influence in the belt, the 1991 polls in the constituency was expected to favour a rising Janata Dal face, even as Anwari had also been seen as a political “defector”.
What happened after poll outcome?
After the Returning Officer for the Koppal seat declared Anwari as the winner, Siddaramaiah challenged it through an election petition filed in the Karnataka High Court with senior advocates L G Havanur and Ravi Varma Kumar as his counsel.
Siddaramaiah alleged that the Returning Officer “wrongly” declared Anwari as the winner with a narrow margin of 11,197 votes by “rejecting” 22,243 votes which he claimed he would have secured.
He stated that Anwari who was elected to the 9th Lok Sabha in 1989 on a Janata Dal ticket had been disqualified by the Lok Sabha Speaker for defecting to the Samajwadi Janata Party. Anwari later joined the Congress ahead of the 1991 polls.
In his plea, Siddaramaiah alleged that Anwari was “permanently disqualified” from the Lok Sabha membership even for the 10th Lok Sabha and could not have filed his nomination for the 1991 polls.
On the question of Anwari being claimed to be “ineligible” to contest the polls due to prior disqualification, Karnataka High Court judge Justice Jaganath Hegde ruled on December 22, 1993 that “neither Article 102 nor the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution provides for a permanent disqualification for being chosen as a Member for a person who is disqualified for being a Member under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution.”
On the rejected votes in the polls, the counsel for Siddaramaiah argued that there was “improper counting” of votes and that eight Assistant Returning Officers in charge of eight Assembly segments of the Koppal constituency were not authorised to declare votes (through ballot paper) as invalid or defective and that the Returning Officer did not sign the rejected ballot papers.
“According to Sri L G Havanur, learned Senior Counsel for the petitioner, these acts of the Assistant Returning Officers are in clear violation of Rule 56 of the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961. It is also his contention that the Assistant Returning Officers were not authorised to perform these acts without specific written delegation from the Returning Officer as required under Section 22 of the Act. It is also not in dispute that the Assistant Returning Officers had no written authority to carry out the acts now complained,” the high court noted.
The high court however ruled on the basis of arguments presented by the advocates for Anwari and the Returning Officer that “no written delegation or authority of the Returning Officer in favour of the Assistant Returning Officers is necessary having regard to the phraseology of Sections 22 and 23 of the Act.”
The HC ruled that “the Returning Officer, therefore, has power to check, restrain or supervise the functions of the Assistant Returning Officers and this would not import the concept of a written delegation. Since the Assistant Returning Officers derive their powers by virtue of Section 22 itself, no written delegation is necessary to perform such functions.”
In its verdict dismissing Siddaramaiah’s election petition, the high court also stated: “It cannot be, therefore, said that even for counting, a written authority from the Returning Officer is necessary. It will have to be remembered that in the instant case, the acts attributed as unauthorised, relate to the counting of votes.”