New Delhi: The Election Commission on September 18 pleaded before the Supreme Court to decline giving an opinion on the Presidential reference on the issue of Gujarat elections since the questions framed in it were hypothetical.

The Commission's senior advocate K K Venugopal arguing on behalf of the Commission said there is a "basic error on the hypothesis" drawn in the reference and the court should decline to answer it.

He said "the court should refrain to answer the Presidential reference on the matter of Article 174 of the Constitution under which time limit of six months applies only to two sessions of the house from the last sitting to the next one and not from the date of dissolution of the house.

"The question is if the court believes that the President has assumed that Article 174 applies to dissolution of the House, then it is subject to Article 324 which gives power to the Election Commission to hold election," he said.

Venugopal cited over half a dozen earlier examples when the apex court had declined to answer such Presidential references in which the questions were either not clear or were beyond the subject matter of the reference.

PTI