Chennai: The DMK on Saturday urged the Election Commission to take steps to include the names of persons cited in an Income Tax report in the FIR filed over alleged bribing of voters in the RK Nagar bypoll before announcing the schedule for holding a fresh election. The EC had cancelled the April 12 bypoll alleging that heavy bribing of voters.
In his representation to EC, N Maruthu Ganesh, who was the DMK’s candidate in that cancelled bypoll, said before announcing the schedule of byelection, recalled that the income tax searches in the premises linked to state health minister C Vijayabaskar in April had led to seizure of documents that allegedly showed routing of about Rs 89 crore to bribe voters during the bypoll. Subsequently, the Election Commission directed the Chief Electoral Officer, Tamil Nadu, to register an FIR through the Returning Officer.
Marutu wants EC to book all offenders
The poll panel had directed “quick and appropriate action be taken by police and apprise the Commission of the same at the earliest,” Ganesh pointed out. Against this background, he said an FIR was registered on April 27 at Abiramapuram police station regarding bribing of voters.
“However, interestingly no accused were named in the said FIR even though several persons were named in the report of the IT Department,” he said.
“I call upon the Election Commission to...make all efforts to alter the FIR... by reflecting the names of all the accused found in the IT department's report,” he said.
His memorandum was addressed to the Chief Election Commissioner and two Election Commissioners in New Delhi. The DMK functionary also wanted the EC to “monitor” the matter so as to bring to book the offenders, failing which he would be constrained to initiate legal proceedings.
