SC to hear Somnath Bharti’s plea against Satish Upadhyay’s 2025 election win

The Supreme Court on Friday said it would hear AAP leader Somnath Bharti’s plea challenging the election of BJP’s Satish Upadhyay from Malviya Nagar constituency in the 2025 Delhi Assembly polls.

Upadhyay defeated Bharti by a margin of 2,131 votes in the Delhi Assembly elections held in February last year.

Bharti has moved the apex court challenging a January 17 judgement of the Delhi High Court, which had dismissed his petition. His plea came up for hearing before a bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta. “We will grant leave and hear the issue,” the bench said.

In his election petition filed before the high court, Bharti had accused Upadhyay of corrupt practices under the Representation of the People Act, 1951, alleging he deployed his agents to bring people to the polling booths in cars.

Bharti had also alleged that the entire election campaign of Jitender Kumar Kochar, the Congress candidate from the constituency, was directed exclusively against him.

He had alleged that there was a deliberate and coordinated strategy by Upadhyay to create a false contest, intended to confuse and divide the secular vote and secure an unfair electoral advantage.

“The petitioner’s (Bharti) omission to implead Kochar is not a mere technical lapse but an incurable defect, which as per the provisions of ROPA (1951 Act) and the law declared by the Supreme Court, strikes at the root of maintainability of the present election petition,” the high court had noted. The high court had dismissed Bharti’s plea, saying the election petition was liable to be dismissed due to non-joinder of Kochar as a respondent. It had said that an election petition was not an ordinary litigation but a special proceeding, the consequences of which directly impinge upon the popular mandate.

The high court had noted that the provisions of the 1951 Act must receive a strict and narrow construction.