The Delhi High Court today set aside the election of ex-Delhi Law Minister Jitendra Singh Tomar for providing a false declaration regarding his educational qualifications in his nomination papers for the 2015 assembly elections in Delhi. Tomar was sacked from his post of law minister from the Arvind Kejriwal led AAP govt in Delhi after he was arrested by Delhi police for procuring fake degrees.
Delhi HC sets aside election of ex-Delhi Law Min Jitender Singh Tomar for wrong declaration of educational qualification in 2015 polls
— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) January 17, 2020
BJP leader Nand Kishore Garg had filed the case against Tomar, demanding that his election should be cancelled as he had submitted fake degree in his election nomination papers.
“The petition is allowed,” Justice Rajeev Sahai Endlaw said.
The development comes ahead of the Delhi assembly polls scheduled to be held on February 8 for which Tomar is likely to fill the nominations on Saturday from the Tri Nagar constituency. According to the list of candidates released by AAP on January 14, Tomar was fielded from the Tri Nagar constituency. In 2015, Tomar had won the election by beating the BJP’s Nand Kishore Garg.
Garg had alleged in his plea that Tomar’s election had been “materially affected by deliberate concealment, misrepresentation, wrong declaration and wilful suppression of the educational qualification in the affidavit filed along with the nomination form”.
Read- The low-down on which of Tomar’s degrees are fake
“The respondent No 1 (Tomar), at the time of filing the nomination, and thereafter, has continued to misrepresent himself to be a law graduate and advocate and has thus been successful in exercising undue influence over the voters, which amounts to corrupt practice within the meaning of the Representation of the Peoples Act,” the plea said.
Earlier, Jitendra Singh Tomar, who had been the Law Minister in Delhi government, had to resign from the post after allegations of furnishing fake degree surfaced against him. In 2017, the TM Bhagalpur University in Bihar had cancelled the law degree awarded to him, after it was found that Tomar had fraudulently obtained the degree with the connivance of some employees of the university. The University had taken the decision after a Delhi police probe had found that Tomar’s law and BSc degrees were fake. Police had found that he had not appeared any exam to get the degrees. Along with Tomar, 16 other people involved in issuing the fake certificates, including a former principal and several staffs of the university were named in the case.
AAP leader Jitendra Singh Tomar contested from Tri Nagar seat in 2013 and 2015. In 2013, he lost by around 2800 votes, while in 2015 he won by about 22 thousand votes. Tomar was made Law Minister in the Delhi government in 2015. But in July 2015, he was arrested by Delhi Police in the fake degree case. However, he subsequently managed to secure bail.
