The Supreme Court has dismissed the petition of Congress candidate and leader Prafulla Gudadhe which questioned Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’ win from the Nagpur South-West Assembly constituency. A bench of Justices J K Maheshwari and Vijay Bishnoi refused to accept Gudadhe’s plea, giving clear relief to Fadnavis. Earlier, Gudadhe had filed a similar petition in the Bombay High Court, which was also rejected. He had argued that the election should be cancelled because it was conducted using EVMs.

 

Gudadhe had filed an election petition in the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court soon after the 2024 Assembly polls and demanded that Fadnavis’s victory be annulled. He alleged that “procedural lapses and corrupt practices” - including anomalies in the electoral roll - cast doubt on the legitimacy of the poll result. On July 4, 2025, the High Court dismissed Gudadhe’s plea. The court ruled that the petition was not maintainable because Gudadhe was not physically present at the time of formal filing - a mandatory requirement under the law.

 

Earlier, in April 2025, the High Court had even issued notice to Fadnavis after Gudadhe’s petition, accepting that a challenge had been filed and giving the State Government time to respond. But in its final ruling, the High Court did not examine the core allegations of voter-list irregularities or procedural faults. Instead, it dismissed the petition purely on mandatory procedural grounds because Gudadhe was not personally present when the petition was filed. Following the High Court’s dismissal, Gudadhe filed an appeal with Supreme Court, hoping for a different verdict. However, the Supreme Court has now rejected his petition as well and refused to entertain the challenge against Fadnavis’s election. The Supreme Court’s rejection is a major relief for Fadnavis. In the 2024 Assembly election, Fadnavis defeated Gudadhe by a margin of 39,710 votes.