Kerala High Court Rejects Election Petition Filed By CPI(M)'s AM Ariff Against Congress MP KC Venugopal's Lok Sabha Win From Alappuzha

The Kerala High Court on Wednesday (June 24) rejected the election petition filed challenging the win of Congress MP K.C. Venugopal from Alappuzha constituency in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections alleging corrupt practice.

Justice G. Girsh pronounced:

"Petition rejected as per Order VII Rule 11(a) CPC."

Order VII Rule 11 of the Code of Civil Procedure (CPC) deals with rejection of plaint. Rule 11(a) states that a plaint can be rejected when it does not disclose a cause of action.

The election petition was filed by A.M. Ariff, CPI(M) politician, who previously served as MP in Alappuzha and MLA in Aroor constituency. There were multiple filing defects noted in the petition and the same was unnumbered. While so, Venugopal had preferred an interim application for dismissing the election petition is limine. It was contended that the petition failed to disclose any cause of action in addition to the defects noted.

The Court referred to Section 86 of the Representation of People Act, which provides that the High Court shall dismiss an election petition which does not comply with the provisions Section 81 or Section 82 or Section 117 of the Act. However, since in the present case, the violation is of another provision, i.e., Section 83(1).

"Since the violation alleged is one relating to the non-compliance of the proviso to Section 83(1) of the RP Act, there is no applicability of the mandate contained in Section 86(1) of the said Act, which requires the High Court to dismiss the election petition. Thus, the position that emerges is that the failure of the petitioner to mention in the affidavit about Annexures...can only be taken as a curable defect, and there is absolutely no scope of dismissal of the election petition at the threshold for the omission in the above regard...The other 11 defects noted by the Registry are also trivial in nature, and hence those defects cannot be termed as substantial defects fatal to the very maintainability of the election petition," the Court opined.

With respect to the corruption allegations, the Court was of the view that corruption alleged were those committed not by Venugopal but by his agents and associates and that too before publication of the election notification. It thus found that these would not come within the purview of Section 123 of the RP Act:

"As far as the present case is concerned, all the allegations levelled by the petitioner in this election petition pertain to those acts allegedly committed by the agents and associates of the first respondent even before the publication of the election notification on 28.03.2024. Therefore, it cannot be said that the allegations levelled by the petitioner in his election petition to set aside the election of the first respondent and to declare him as the duly elected candidate, would come within the purview of the corrupt practices envisaged under Section 123 of the RP Act."

Next, the Court considered whether the election petition had to be dismissed at the threshold. Though the petitioner contended that he is entitled to incorporate appropriate allegations in the said petition by way of amendment in the course of procedures, the Court opined that this was not permitted by law:

"I am not impressed by the aforesaid argument of the learned counsel for the petitioner, since the law prohibits the petitioner from making such amendments in the election petition in respect of material aspects which he has omitted to incorporate at the time of filing of that petition."

Thus, the Court rejected the unnumbered election petition.

The election petition was moved by Advocate J. Om Prakash.

Senior Advocate S. Sreekumar and Advocates Thomas P. Kuruvilla, R. Githesh, Harikrishnan S., Ajay Ben Jose, Manjunath Menon, Sachin Jacob Ambat, Anna Linda Eden, Hani P. Nair, Naveen A. Varkey and Cyriac Tom appeared for K.C. Venugopal.

Case Filing No: El.Pet. No. 1 of 2024

Case Title: A.M. Ariff v. K.C. Venugopal and Ors.

Citation: 2026 LiveLaw (Ker) 346

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