NEW DELHI: A petition has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking initiation of proceedings against the Prime Minister Narendra Modi for allegedly concealing information about his marital status during 2012 assembly polls.

The petition, filed by Ahmadabad resident Nishant Varma, challenged Gujarat HC order refusing to entertain his plea to proceed against Modi on the ground of delay in filing complaint on the issue. The complaint was filed in April 2014 when Modi while filing his nomination paper in Lok Sabha and had mentioned the name of his spouse in the affidavit.

Challenging the HC order, the petitioner alleged a voter has the elementary right to know full particulars of a candidate and proceeding must be initiated for not furnishing all information while filing nomination paper. He contended that HC erred in dismissing his plea on the basis of limitation and without going into the merit of the case.

Varma said that there was no delay in filing complaint as he came to know about the marital status of Modi only in April 2014.

“The HC dismissed the petition without any observation on merit, solely on the ground of delay in filing complaint dated April 11, 2014, ignoring that the period of limitation would commence from the date when the petitioner acquired the knowledge of the abovementioned offence. In the instant case, the petitioner acquired the knowledge of the said offence on April 10, 2014 and filed the compliant,” the petition said.

The petitioner alleged that in 2012 Modi, contesting state assembly election from Maninagar constituency, had left the space of spouse blank, which amounted to concealing information and hence action should be taken against Modi under the provisions of Representation of People (RP) Act.

Soon after Modi’s affidavit in 2014 general election, Verma had filed a criminal complaint in a magisterial court demanding an FIR to be lodged against Modi and PK Jadeja, election officer. The court rejected the complaint while stating that though an offence has been committed but cognizance can’t be taken since the complaint was lodged after a delay of one year and four months. He then had approached HC which also refused to entertain his plea.

