Delhi High Court has rejected a plea seeking to de-register the Asaduddin Owaisi-led AIMIM by the Election Commission of India.
Justice Prateek Jalan dismissed the plea observing it was without any merit.
The high court further noted the petitioner`s arguments amounted to interference with the fundamental rights of the members of AIMIM to constitute themselves as a political party espousing their political beliefs and values.
The petitioner, Tirupati Narasimha Murari, assailed the registration of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Musalimeen (AIMIM) on the ground that as a political party, its constitution intended to further the cause of only one religious community, i.e., Muslims.
The plea, therefore, argued it was against the principles of secularism which every political party must adhere to under the scheme of the Constitution and the Representation of the People Act.
Such a consequence, the court said, cannot lightly be countenanced.
The court said AIMIM fulfilled the requirement of Section 29A of the Representation of People Act, which mandated that the constitutional documents of a political party should declare it “bears true faith and allegiance to the Constitution, and to the basic tenets of socialism, secularism, and democracy”.
“On the facts of the present case, this requirement has been fulfilled by AIMIM. The petitioner himself has annexed to the writ petition, a letter dated 9.8.1989, submitted by AIMIM in support of its application for registration, stating that its constitution had been amended in terms of Section 29A(5) of the Act,” the judge wrote in a verdict passed on November 20.
