D C SAXENA Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner says this petition is in the nature of public interest litigation. There are seven respondents. They are respectively Union of India through the Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs; Chief Election Commissioner; Shri Dinesh Singh, Minister for Foreign Affairs; Dr. Manmohan Singh, Minister for Finance; Mr.S.R.Bommai, President,JanataDal; Mr.R.K. Dhawan, MemberofParliament;andElectoral Registration Officer, Haryana. The petitioner has prayed as follows :-

(2.) With the petition an application seeking interim relief was also filed. Here the petitioner sought an ad interim ex-parte order restraining the second respondent from taking any further steps for declaring the election to Rajya Sabha from Haryana; for sealing of all records pertaining to the proposed election of the third respondent including the record of the entering of the name of the third respondent in the electoral rolls of the constituencies in the State ofHaryana where the third respondent had filed his nomination paper and it was accepted by the Returning Officer; and for issuing show cause noticeto the seventh respondent as to why he should not be prosecuted under section 32 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950('Actof 1950' for short).

(3.) When this petition was filed we issued notice to show cause to the respondents as to why rule nisi be not issued and also issued notice on the application for interim relief limited to respondents 1, 2, 3 and 7. Respondent No. 5 has not so far been served. None of the respondents filed their respective answers to show cause notice or replies to the application. They, however, submitted that it was not necessary to file any reply as they were raising a preliminary objection about the maintainability of the petition itself. We, therefore, heard the parties on this question.