The Karnataka High Court on Wednesday set aside the election of G. Manjunatha, Independent MLA from Mulbagal reserved constituency (Scheduled Caste), in the elections held to the State Assembly in 2013.
The court held that the acceptance of Mr. Manjunatha’s nomination papers as well as consequent declaration that he was elected from the constituency are illegal as he failed to establish that he belongs to a Scheduled Caste community, the Beda (Budaga) Jangama.
Justice A.S. Bopanna delivered the verdict while partly allowing a petition filed in 2013 by Munianjappa, a defeated candidate of the JD(S).
Declaring that Mr. Manjunatha belongs to the Byragi caste, which is a Backward Caste (Category-I), the court imposed costs of ₹25,000 on him.
‘Fraudulent’ certificate
The court observed that the caste certificate, dated April 3, 2012, is “concocted, manipulated, bogus and the computer-generated printout is not a genuine certificate”.
The tahsildars, who had served during the relevant periods, were examined in court, and all of them denied that neither was the caste certificate ordered to be issued by them nor was it issued by them.
From the documents and evidences, the court found that school records of Mr. Manjunatha show that he belongs to the Byragi caste and his application for Beda Jangama caste certificate was rejected in 2008 by the authorities concerned with a categoric finding that he belongs to the Byragi caste and there was no one belonging to Beda Jangama in his village. Also, the High Court noticed that his suit seeking directions to the school and Education Department to change his caste to Beda Jangama from Byragi was rejected by a civil court earlier.
Meanwhile, the court did not allow the plea of the petitioner, to declare him [the petitioner] as elected candidate, as the tenure of the present Legislative Assembly is to end shortly and the calendar of events for the election has already been announced. Mr. Manjunatha had won 73,146 votes and the petitioner had got 39,142 votes in the 2013 elections.
