Chennai: A total of 932 nominations from about 1,587 nominations received for 39-Lok Sabha constituencies in Tamil Nadu, have been accepted by the Election Commission after scrutiny on Thursday. The Karur LS constituency tops the list with the highest number of accepted nominations at 43, while the Nilgiris saw the lowest number of accepted candidates at 10.
AIADMK senior and Lok Sabha Deputy Speaker M. Thambidurai and Congress candidate S. Jothimani, are among the 43 candidates contesting from Karur. The South Chennai parliamentary constituency with 42 candidates comes next. The Nilgiris (Reserved) parliamentary constituency from where former Union telecom minister A. Raja is contesting, has the least number of candidates.
The final list of candidates will be announced on Friday, the last day for withdrawal of nominations. Symbols will be allotted for independents after the last day for withdrawal of nominations, which is on March 29. Curtains to filing of nominations came down on March 26.
Speaking to reporters here, Chief Electoral Officer Satyabrata Sahoo said a total of 1,587 nominations were received from 39 constituencies and of them 932 nominations have been accepted as valid and 655 nominations have been rejected. Similarly, the Election Commission had received 518 nominations for the bye-polls to 18 Assembly constituencies in the State, to be held simultaneously on April 18. Of the 518 papers, 305 nominations have been accepted as valid while 213 nominations were rejected.
Perambur Assembly constituency saw the highest number of accepted candidates with 51 while only 8 candidates were accepted from Gudiyatham, making it the least. Sahoo informed that 44 complaints have been filed against various political parties for poll related offences till Wednesday.
44 poll violation cases booked:
“So far, 44 cases under Representation of People Act, section 171 (Wearing garb or carrying token used by public servant with fraudulent intent) of the IPC and Motor Vehicle Act have been filed by the ECI,” he said. Of the cases, while 10 have been registered against the DMK, nine cases were filed against the AIADMK, three cases each against PMK and MNM, two cases against the BJP while 17 cases were registered against independent candidates.
On the seizures he said, Rs 50.7 crore cash has been seized across the State after the Model Code of Conduct came into force. Jewellery worth more than Rs 69 crore has been seized by the officials till Wednesday.
The seized gold jewellery accounted for 223.5kg and silver jewellery weighed 346.7kg.
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