MCA poll: Court reserves order on Gopinath Munde's suit

A civil court today reserved its order till Monday on a suit filed by senior BJP leader Gopinath Munde challenging rejection of his nomination to contest for the president's post at the Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA) polls.
Judge M S Sharma of the Bombay City Civil Court today heard the arguments of counsels appearing for Munde, MCA and Sharad Pawar and is likely to pass the order on Monday.
Arguing for Munde, his lawyers Niranjan Bhadang and Vivekanand Gupta raised the point of residential status of Pawar who was elected unopposed as MCA president in the biennial polls held yesterday.

"The Lok Shaba's website, till the time MCA election took place, showed Pawar's address as Baramati and previously between 2001 and 2011 when Pawar was the president of MCA, he was having the election card showing Baramati as his address", they argued.
Munde's application to contest polls was rejected by the election officer on the basis of his residential status observing that address as per his electoral registration was Beed.
"Munde's passport bears the address of Mumbai and that's his permanent address", said Bhadang, adding that the senior BJP leader's permanent address has been Mumbai since 1986.
The counsel also referred to former Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh (now deceased) saying his passport, which had his Mumbai address, was considered as permanent address.

"..Why are there two criteria for Munde and Deshmukh? This rejection is a conspiracy," argued Bhadang.