In a rare decision, the Gujarat High Court on 12 May nullified the election of Gujarat Minister of State Bhupendrasinh Manubha Chudasama during the 2017 state elections, based on a petition filed by his Congress rival for the Dholka constituency. While Justice Paresh Upadhyay of the high court found that Chudasama's election was void on three grounds under the Representation of the People Act - including commission of a 'corrupt practice' - he did not accept the runner-up Congress candidate's plea to be installed as MLA, which means a by poll will be needed for the constituency. Corrupt practices are defined in Section 123(7) of the Representation of the People Act 1951, and include procuring the assistance of government officers by a candidate to help in their election. Essentially, it came down to how the Returning Officer waited to see what the margins were from the EVM count, before starting the count of the postal ballots. The EC requires postal ballots to be counted before the final two rounds of EVM counting, precisely to avoid a situation where the postal ballot count can then be modified' to benefit one candidate over the other. The court concluded “This shows that the Returning Officer was doing everything for the furtherance of the prospects of the respondent No 2 even before this Court in the trial. This is no less than an unholy nexus of the Returning Officer and the respondent No 2, which further fortifies the findings of this Court qua corrupt practice. The court also took note that following the election, the Election Commission actually initiated disciplinary action against the Returning Officer in March 2019 for breach of its instructions. However, not only have these proceedings been entirely stalled, he was actually promoted by the Gujarat government in October 2019. Using the rules of circumstantial evidence, the court found that this indicated that Chudasama had procured the Returning Officers assistance to salvage the election', and so found that he had committed a corrupt practice. The judges could not accept Rathod's request for him to be declared the winning candidate, because, by defying the Election Commission's instructions, the Returning Officer had tainted the whole vote counting process, which had to be declared void. As a result, even Rathod's votes couldn't be counted as valid. If an MLA's election is overturned for the commission of corrupt practices, this does not automatically lead to disqualification from standing for future elections. The President will need to decide within three months, after taking the opinion of the Election Commission, whether Chudasama should be disqualified, and if so, for how long.