Court Raises Question On Maintainability After Plea Challenges AAP Poll Promise

The Delhi High Court on Thursday questioned the petitioner on the maintainability of a plea against the AAP's recent poll promise of paying a stipend to women under the Mukhya Mantri Mahila Samman Yojana scheme in the national capital.

Justice Jyoti Singh questioned the petitioner on how an election petition was maintainable on the issue.

"How is it maintainable as an election petition? You go and file a PIL," the court said.

The petitioner said AAP was luring voters with a false announcement as Delhi government had already denied having such a scheme.

The court asked petitioner one Vijay Kumar to address submissions on the maintainability of the plea and posted the hearing on January 10.

Advocate Shiv Shankar Parashar, the petitioner's counsel, said Kumar had filed a complaint with the Election Commission of India over the alleged false announcement by the ruling party in Delhi to pay a Rs 2,100 monthly stipend to women having Delhi voter IDs.

Claiming no action was taken, he urged the court to direct the election commission to expeditiously dispose of his complaint filed on January 3.

The plea also sought a direction to the chief electoral officer to stop further filling of forms related to the scheme by AAP workers.

The lawyer said women voters of Delhi would be affected if the complaint was not decided.

On December 12, 2024, AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal announced the roll out of the Delhi government's scheme and promised to raise the monthly aid from Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,100 if the party returned to power.

On December 25, however, Delhi government's Women and Child Development and Health departments issued public notices, distancing themselves from the scheme besides the promise of free treatment for the elderly, triggering a fresh row ahead of the assembly polls.

The two departments cautioned people against providing personal details to anyone on the pretext of registering for the what they termed as "non-existent" schemes and said any private individual or political party collecting such physical forms or information was "fraudulent and without any authority".

Delhi goes to polls on February 5 with counting scheduled on February 8.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)