Former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh and minority affairs minister Nawab Malik have moved the Bombay high court seeking permission to vote in the Rajya Sabha polls.
The moves comes after the special PMLA court rejected their pleas seeking one day bail to be able to vote in the elections scheduled on Friday.
The Enforcement Directorate while objecting to their bail pleas had told the court that prisoners cannot vote as per Representation of People (RPA) Act.
The central agency cited the Act’s Section 62(5), which says no person “shall vote at any election if he is confined in a prison, whether under a sentence of imprisonment or transportation or otherwise, or is in the lawful custody of the police.”
Deshmukh was arrested by the ED in November last year on allegations of money laundering. The ED case is based on the FIR filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on April 21, 2021. The CBI FIR was filed after the allegations levelled by former Mumbai top cop Param Bir Singh.
In a letter written to Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray on March 20 last year, Singh alleged that Deshmukh had directed certain Mumbai cops including suspended assistant inspector Sachin Waze to collect ₹100 crore per month from Mumbai’s restaurant and bars.
The ED had claimed that Waze had called a meeting of bar owners, and collected ₹4.70 crores between December 2020 and February 2021, thereby handing over the money to Deshmukh’s personal assistant Kundan Shinde.
On the other hand, Nawab Malik was arrested on February 23 by the ED in connection with a money laundering case against fugitive gangster Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar and his associates.
According to ED, Malik allegedly funded a prominent member of the D-Gang (Dawood gang) for illegal occupation of a property.