{"id":9013,"date":"2026-06-30T09:58:55","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T09:58:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lawsandlegals.com\/english\/?p=9013"},"modified":"2026-06-30T10:01:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T10:01:22","slug":"rajasthan-high-court-upholds-election-of-bayana-mla-ritu-banawat-dismisses-election-petition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lawsandlegals.com\/english\/rajasthan-high-court-upholds-election-of-bayana-mla-ritu-banawat-dismisses-election-petition\/","title":{"rendered":"Rajasthan High Court Upholds Election of Bayana MLA Ritu Banawat, Dismisses Election Petition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jaipur:<\/strong> The Rajasthan High Court has upheld the election of Ritu Banawat, the MLA elected from the Bayana Assembly constituency in Bharatpur district during the 2023 Rajasthan Assembly elections, by dismissing an election petition challenging her victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The petition was filed by Purushottam Lal, who was also a candidate in the election. He alleged that Banawat had failed to fully disclose her assets, liabilities, bank accounts, and other mandatory information in Form 26 submitted with her nomination papers. He claimed that several columns were left blank, certain bank accounts and properties were omitted, and incorrect information was provided regarding her husband’s assets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also alleged that she failed to disclose her Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) accounts, thereby misleading voters and violating their right to know about a candidate’s background. The petitioner even requested the Court to cancel the nominations of all candidates, including Banawat, and declare him elected unopposed as the only remaining valid candidate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Court, however, found that the petitioner failed to prove any of these allegations. It held that there was no evidence that Banawat had intentionally concealed any material information about her assets or liabilities or that any omission had influenced the election result or amounted to a corrupt practice under election law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regarding the allegation that she did not disclose her social media accounts, the Court observed that she had already disclosed her mobile number and email address, through which her social media profiles could easily be identified. Since the petitioner himself admitted that he had located the accounts using this information, the Court held that no voter had been misled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the issue of bank accounts, the Court found that the accounts allegedly omitted contained only negligible amounts and that the total value of her movable assets had already been declared in Form 26. Similarly, after examining bank records, income tax documents, and other evidence, the Court concluded that there was no proof that Banawat had deliberately concealed any significant assets belonging to herself or her husband.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The High Court referred to several Supreme Court judgments emphasizing that candidates are required to make full and truthful disclosures because voters have a fundamental right to know relevant information about those contesting elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, it clarified that every technical error or minor omission does not automatically invalidate an election. An election can only be set aside if there is proof that material information was deliberately concealed, voters were misled, the election result was materially affected, or the candidate committed a corrupt practice. None of these conditions were established in this case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Court also noted the huge margin of victory. Banawat secured 1,05,748 votes, while the petitioner received only 689 votes. Even if the votes of all other candidates were combined, they would still fall short of Dr. Banawat’s total, making the petitioner’s request to be declared elected legally unsustainable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the Court upheld the validity of Banawat’s election, it strongly criticized her conduct during the proceedings. It found that she had avoided service of court summons for several months, causing an unnecessary delay of nearly ten months before summons were eventually served through the Rajasthan Legislative Assembly Secretariat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Court observed that elected representatives are expected to respect judicial proceedings and should not attempt to delay or evade the legal process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a result, while dismissing the election petition, the High Court imposed a cost of \u20b91 lakh on Banawat for her conduct and directed her to pay the amount to the petitioner within 30 days. Thus, her election remains valid, but the Court made it clear that delaying judicial proceedings by avoiding summons is unacceptable and can attract financial penalties even when the election itself is found to be lawful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jaipur: The Rajasthan High Court has upheld the election of Ritu Banawat, the MLA elected from the Bayana Assembly constituency in Bharatpur district during the 2023 Rajasthan Assembly elections, by dismissing an election petition challenging her victory. The petition was filed by Purushottam Lal, who was also a candidate in the election. He alleged that … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9014,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_wppp_is_locked":false,"_wppp_selected_plans":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,29],"tags":[1100,1093,1092,1094,1101,1107,1072,1095,1106,1098,1102,1108,1097,1099,561,471,300,1103,1105,1096,43,228,323,1104],"class_list":["post-9013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rajasthan-high-court","category-top-stories","tag-asset-disclosure","tag-bayana-assembly-constituency","tag-bayana-mla","tag-bharatpur","tag-candidate-disclosure","tag-corrupt-practice","tag-court-verdict","tag-dr-ritu-banawat","tag-election-case","tag-election-commission","tag-election-law","tag-election-litigation","tag-election-petition","tag-form-26-affidavit","tag-high-court-judgment","tag-justice-anoop-kumar-dhand","tag-legal-news-india","tag-mla-election-challenge","tag-purushottam-lal","tag-rajasthan-assembly-elections-2023","tag-rajasthan-high-court","tag-rajasthan-news","tag-rajasthan-politics","tag-social-media-disclosure"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawsandlegals.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawsandlegals.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawsandlegals.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawsandlegals.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawsandlegals.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9013"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lawsandlegals.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9016,"href":"https:\/\/lawsandlegals.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9013\/revisions\/9016"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawsandlegals.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawsandlegals.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawsandlegals.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawsandlegals.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}