Chennai: DMK's RK Nagar by-election candidate has approached the Madras high court to restrain the Election Commission of India from notifying the by-election to the RK Nagar assembly constituency, which was cancelled earlier due to alleged large scale bribing of voters.
Justice K.Ravinchandra Babu, before whom the petition filed by N.Maruthu Ganesh came up for hearing on Wednesday, referred the same to the First Bench headed by Chief Justice Indira Banerjee, as the bench had earlier expressed the hope that the ECI would complete the election process by December 2017.
The judge also expressed his hope that the ECI would not precipitate the matter any further till the First Bench takes up the petition for hearing.
In his petition, he also sought a compensation of Rs 5 lakh, which he spent during the cancelled by-election from the ECI and recover the same from persons by whose illegal activities the bye-election was rescinded.
Senior counsel P.Wilson, appearing for the petitioner submitted that petrified at the prospect of the petitioner's impending victory, and in order to enable AIADMK (Amma) faction candidate TTV Dinakaran to win the elections, Chief Minister Edapaddi K.Palaniswami and all his cabinet ministers who supported Dinakaran then, had abused their official positions to spend '100 crore to bribe each voter in the said constituency.
Based on reliable information, the Income Tax department conducted raid in 21 places in Chennai and 11 places outside Chennai belonging to health minister C.Vijaya Bhaskar and based on its report, the ECI had rescinded the election. On the basis of the ECI's letter, an FIR came to be registered only on April 27, 2017.
No accused was named in the said FIR though the report of I-T department implicates several persons in bribing the voters, including the Chief Minister, Health Minister and his cabinet and party colleagues.
If the report of the I-T department was taken to be true, as the ECI has done while rescinding the by-election, there was no reason as to why till today the ECI was not able to register a complaint against persons indicted by the I-T department. The ECI was now planning to announce the bye-election for the RK Nagar assembly constituency.
If the by-election was notified again without taking any penal action against the offenders named by the I-T department and relied upon by the ECI to rescind the election, the very purpose of rescinding the election would be rendered otiose, Wilson added.
