MP Kangana Ranaut's election victory challenged in HC

Mandi: The Himachal Pradesh High Court has issued notice to Kangana Ranaut, the BJP Lok Sabha member from Mandi, directing her to respond to a petition challenging her election victory by August 21.

In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Ranaut won the Mandi Lok Sabha seat, defeating her rival Congress candidate Vikramaditya Singh by 74,755 votes. She had polled 5,37,002 votes against Singh's 4,62,267 votes.

The petition was filed by Layak Ram Negi, a former forest department employee, who filed his nomination papers as an independent candidate for the Mandi seat. Stating that his nomination papers were wrongfully rejected, Negi called for the annulment of the Lok Sabha election for the Mandi seat. His petition also included the Mandi Returning Officer (RO) as a respondent.

Negi stated that he filed his nomination papers on May 14, 2024, for the Mandi Lok Sabha election and was given time until the following day to provide all required documentation. He was informed that he would also require no-dues certificates for telephone, water, and electricity bills from the authorities concerned. Negi claimed that he submitted all necessary paperwork to the RO on May 15, but the latter rejected his candidature.

Negi said the RO told him that his nomination was rejected because there were certain errors in the nomination papers that could not be fixed. He claimed that if his papers had been approved, the outcome of the election might have been different as a result of his participation. He pleaded that he could have won the election had his papers been accepted and said that the election be set aside.