The Bombay high court on Friday dismissed Maharashtra minister Nawab Mallik’s and former home minister Anil Deshmukh’s requests for permission to vote in the legislative council election on June 20. Both are behind bars on money-laundering accusations.
During the hearing, Malik’s senior counsel, Amit Desai, stated that the minister just wanted to vote while being escorted.
Desai stated that although Section 62(5) of the Representation of the People Act made it illegal for persons in jail to vote, this was due to “physical difficulties” such as arranging for security and creating the necessary infrastructure for inmates to vote.
‘He (Malik) is currently in a hospital and not confined inside a prison. He is also yet to be convicted, so he is not disqualified from the process of casting his vote,’ Desai said.
He further claimed that the court had the authority to grant the required permissions in this case. ‘Can there be a case that an undertrial, who has the presumption of innocence, the case against whom hasn’t even been opened in the court, is deprived of his right to vote in a democracy? Or, that he is excluded from a democratic process?’ Desai said.
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