Will affect election: Calcutta HC dismisses plea flagging age discrepancy in BJP candidate Hasirani Rath's affidavit

The Calcutta High Court recently dismissed a plea by the West Bengal Congress seeking verification of an alleged discrepancy in the election affidavit of Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) Nandigram bye-election candidate Hasirani Rath [West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee & Anr. v Election Committee of India & Ors]..Justice Krishna Rao held that deciding the issue at this stage would interfere with the ongoing election process. "If at this stage, this Court will decide the issue raised by the petitioner No. 2 (Mita Chakraborty, Congress leader) with regard to the nomination papers of the respondent no. 5 (Hasirani Rath), the same will directly affects the present election process," said the Court.The by-election is scheduled to be held on October 6..Rath was announced as the BJP's candidate on September 15. The seat fell vacant after BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari, who had won both Nandigram and Bhabanipur in the 2026 Assembly election, retained the latter seat. She is the mother of Chandranath Rath, a close aide of Adhikari who was killed in May this yearThe dispute concerned Rath's Form 26 affidavit (candidate's election disclosure form), submitted along with her nomination for the Nandigram Assembly by-election. In her affidavit, Rath declared her age as “60+ years”, while at the same time stating that she had passed class X from Chowkhali Ganga Padma Milan Kanya Vidyapith (High School) in 1965..Before the Court, the Congress argued that the two declarations were inconsistent. They contended that either Rath's declared age or her educational qualification was incorrect and that the defect was of a substantial character. The party argued that the returning officer should have examined the discrepancy while scrutinising Rath's nomination under Section 36 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, which allows the officer to reject a nomination on specified grounds after scrutiny.The Election Commission of India, however, argued that Rath's nomination had already been scrutinised and accepted on September 17 and that no objection had been raised during the scrutiny.The Court noted that a complaint regarding the affidavit was made only on September 21. The Chief Electoral Officer also submitted that a prescribed Form 26 affidavit had been filed. An allegation of false information, he argued, could not by itself be a ground to reject her nomination.Meanwhile, the BJP said that Rath actually studied in Class X in 1980 and attributed the 1965 entry in the affidavit to a typographical error..Taking note of the submissions, the Court observed that polling is scheduled for October 6, with counting on October 9.It relied on the Supreme Court's ruling in Election Commission of India v Ashok Kumar, which held that judicial intervention should generally be postponed where it would interrupt, obstruct or prolong an ongoing election.Additionally, the Court held that deciding whether the discrepancy was a substantial defect would require evidence and could not be done at this stage of the election. While dismissing the plea, the Court clarified that the issue could instead be raised through an election petition after the election. .Senior Advocate Ritzu Ghosal along with Advocates Sanjay Banerjee, Sohaib Rauf, Ajitesh Pandey, Sreeparna Das, Anish Mukherjee, Tathagata Majumder, Sayantan Chatterjee, Ledia Dasgupta, Shamik Roy, Abid Ali, Abhijit Raha, Manojit Bhattacharyya, Arka Chakraborty, Anwar Ali, Sarbani Mukhopadhyay, Ranjit Mondal, Sayan Datta, Asfak Ahammad, Samirul Sardar and Manish Ojha appeared for the petitioners..Senior Advocate Dama Seshadri Naidu and advocates Prateek Kumar and Deepak Sharma represented Election Committee of India..Senior Advocate Jishnu Chowdhury and Advocates Sanskriti Agarwal, Anamika Pandey and Deep Ba represented the Chief Electoral Officer.Senior Advocate Joydip Kar with Advocates Pijush Biswas and Tamoghna Pramanick appeared for Rath..[Read Judgment]