Cuttack: Fresh trouble is brewing for BJD leader N. Bhaskar Rao after Congress MLA Bhujabal Majhi filed a petition in the Orissa High Court today praying for setting aside his election to the Rajya Sabha in the recently concluded polls to the Upper House on charges of filing a false affidavit.
Claiming that Rao had submitted a false affidavit while filing his nomination for the Rajya Sabha polls, Majhi said contrary to the claim made in his affidavit that he has no outstanding tax dues towards the Government of India, the MP is yet to pay tax worth Rs 41 lakh tax for the 2007-08 and 2008-09 financial years.
Elaborating on the petition filed in the High Court, Gopal Agarwal, counsel for the petitioner, said, “In his plea, the Congress MLA has prayed before the HC to declare the election of Rao null and void. Under Sec 33 of the Representation of People's Act, every candidate has to submit all the data in Form-26 of the affidavit along with the nomination papers. But the MP has claimed in his affidavit that he does not ow any tax to the government, which is not true,” adding that Rao is the sole respondent in the case.
Notably, Rao was among the three senior BJD leaders – the other two being Prasanna Acharya and Bishnu Das - to iwn the three seats of Rajya Sabha from Odisha during the biennial polls to the Upper House in June this year.