Delhi High Court Dismisses Plea Against Registration Granted To AIMIM As Political Party

The Delhi High Court has dismissed a petition seeking quashing of the registration granted by Election Commission of India (ECI) to All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Musalimeen (AIMIM) as a political party.

Justice Prateek Jalan rejected the plea moved by one Tirupati Narashima Murari who also challenged a circular issued by ECI in 2014 granting recognition to AIMIM as a State level party in the State of Telangana.

He also sought to restrain the ECI from recognizing and treating AIMIM as a registered political party.

AIMIM was founded in 1958. The plea was filed in 2018. Murari was a member of Shiv Sena party then. It was his case that AIMIM did not fulfil the conditions laid down in Section 29A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, which deals with registration of associations and bodies as political parties with ECI.

He contended that the constitution of AIMIM was intended to further the cause only of one religious community- Muslims, and thus militates against the principles of secularism, to which every political party must adhere under the scheme of the Constitution of India and RP Act.

Rejecting the plea, Justice Jalan said that AIMIM fulfilled the legal requirement that the constitutional documents of a political party should declare that it bears true faith and allegiance to the Constitution, as well as to the basic tenets of socialism, secularism, and democracy.

“The petitioner's arguments are thus tantamount to interference with the fundamental rights of the members of AIMIM to constitute themselves as a political party espousing their political beliefs and values. Such a consequence cannot lightly be countenanced and has been specifically proscribed in the judgments cited above,” the Court said.

It also rejected Murari's counsel's submission that the attempt to garner votes on the grounds of religion, constitutes a corrupt practice under Section 123(3) of the RP Act.

Justice Jalan said that the purpose of defining “corrupt practices” is to determine disputes in the process of election, including election petitions and to adjudicate disqualification of candidates under Section 8A of the RP Act.

“The provisions of Section 123 of the Act are not relevant to the requirements for registration of a political party, but to the outcome of a particular election, and to the disqualification of a person to participate in the electoral process. The contention based on Section 123 of the Act is therefore rejected,” it said.

Counsel for Petitioner: Mr. Hari Shankar Jain, Mr. Vishnu Shankar Jain, Ms. Mani Munj

Counsel for Respondents: Mr. Harish Vaidyanathan Shankar, CGSC with Mr. Srish Kumar Mishra and Mr. Alexander Mathai Paikaday, Advocates for UOI; Ms. Suruchi Suri, SC for ECI; Mr. Muhammad Ali Khan, Mr. Omar Hoda, Ms. Eesha Bakshi, Mr. Kamran Khan, Ms. Gurbani Bhatia and Mr. Arjun Sharma, Advocates for R-3

Title: TIRUPATI NARASHIMA MURARI v. UNION OF INDIA AND ORS.

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