The special leave petition (SLP), filed by Mozam Ali Mir on January 10, states that the high court “erroneously dismissed” his public interest litigation (PIL) on January 9, stating that it is “not entitled to pass any order or issue such a direction, which can obstruct the statutory election process”. Mir argued that the high court had failed to appreciate the “public interest nature” of his PIL, which affects the sanctity of free and fair elections.

Mir had approached the high court on January 5, claiming that the returning officers of all 227 electoral wards in Mumbai had rejected several nominations on frivolous grounds, such as the affidavits not being in the prescribed format, defective question-answer sheets, and non-submission of no-objection certificates (NOCs) from the water, tax and police departments. The petition also blamed the district election officer and the municipal commissioner for these “high-handed, arbitrary, and unconstitutional actions”.

The petition alleged that the returning officers had acted without jurisdiction by issuing a so-called requisition list, demanding documents not prescribed in the notification issued by the State Election Commission (SEC) last month.

To underline the scale of rejection, Mir’s counsel, advocate AA Siddique, had informed the high court on January 9 that only 150 of the 739 nomination forms distributed in ward No. 23 were accepted due to “the illegal insistence on non-statutory NOCs and hyper-technical rejections”. Similarly, in ward No. 18, out of 507 distributed forms, only 118 were accepted, he said.

This has deprived a large number of eligible citizens of their statutory right to participate in the upcoming BMC elections, the petition said. Citing data published by election authorities on December 30, Mir claimed that nearly 70%-80% of aspirants who collected nomination forms were unable to file them.

After the high court dismissed his petition, Mir approached the Supreme Court with an SLP, filed through advocate Rashid Azam. He argued that the high court’s dismissal of the matter, despite the urgency highlighted in his PIL, was arbitrary and exposed thousands of candidates to irreversible prejudice.

Mir highlighted the “massive disparities” between the number of nomination forms distributed—11,391—and those accepted—2,516. “If the elections proceed without restoration of nominations, the petitioner and the public will suffer irreparable loss. The balance of convenience lies overwhelmingly in favour of protecting electoral integrity until the effective representation is allowed of the public in the election process,” the SLP said.

It also claimed that the high court had failed to distinguish that the petitioner was not challenging the delimitation or the scheduling of the election. Rather, it said, the PIL was directed against the collateral executive wrongs committed by the district election officer and the municipal commissioner.

Through his SLP, Mir also urged the Supreme Court to direct the authorities to include the names of the candidates whose nominations were rejected in the list of validly nominated candidates for the electoral wards. He also requested that the SEC be ordered to revise the election programme in the greater interest of the public, to ensure maximum participation in the election process.