Correspondent for the television newsmagazine Star News, Shishir Joshi, also a witness in the case, said Congress leader Sharad Pawar in an interview to him after the elections had claimed that signing on blank forms was a practice. Since MLAs are spread out all over the State and are unavailable except when the legislature session is on, the Congress took signatures of members of the Legislative Assembly on blank forms beforehand.

The court of Justice V R Datar today began recording evidence in Gidwani's election petition. The petitioner, who fought the MLC elections of June 1998 as an Independent, has challenged Mehta's election, saying his nominationpapers were invalid since the paper was blank when it had been signed by 10 Congress MLAs. Were Mehta's candidature to be rejected, Gidwani would have won a seat in the MLC elections, he has pleaded in his case.

Since cross-voting had taken place by Congress members to ensure the success of Mehta - a former Congress minister and sitting MLC - the Congress high command had issued show-cause notices to the Congress legislators responsible for signing nomination papers.

In their depositions, Congress MLA from Colaba, Ashok Dhatrak, and Congress legislator R R Patil, said the blank forms were signed in the room of Madhukar Pichad, leader of the Opposition in the State Legislature. Dhatrak, while admitting that he had been sent the show-cause notice, said he did not remember the exact reply he had given. ``Unless I see the original I cannot be sure of the answers,'' he told the court. He was shown photocopies of his purported reply which he refused to ratify. ``While it is difficult not to recognise mysignature, I cannot be sure unless I see the originals,'' he repeated, to cross-examination by Shekhar Naphade, counsel for Mehta.

He said that while he had signed the papers, he did not do so to support any Independent candidate. ``I was told that the papers were for the elections to the Legislative Council for a Congress candidate,'' he said and added that it was left to the party to decide on whom to choose as the official candidate.

Dhatrak admitted he was aware that Mehta was keen on contesting on a Congress ticket, but was unaware of the party's stand on his candidature. When asked by Naphade if he knew Mehta was contesting the elections, he said he did, only after reading about it in the newspapers. He said since an official candidate is decided in the eleventh hour, it was a practice in the Congress to get signatures of `proposers' and `seconders' on blank forms beforehand. He, therefore, did not enquire about the nomination form signed by him, nor did he object to signing on blank paper. He saidhe did not know how the form reached Mehta, and claimed he realised that the forms signed by him had been used for Mehta's candidature only through the newspapers.

V M Thorat, counsel for Pratapsinh Mohite-Patil, another respondent in the case, however, objected a couple of times to Shishir Joshi's submissions, claiming that he (Joshi) was not responsible for recording Pawar's interview, which was done by a cameraperson. Naphade also pointed out that while the original recording was kept in the NDTV (Star News producers) library, he had brought only the edited version. ``There is a difference between the edited and the original version,'' said Naphade, to which Joshi said it was a difference only in duration since the irrelevant material was edited.