Chennai: A public interest litigation has been filed in the Madras high court, challenging the deletion of nearly 45,000 names from the voters list of coastal areas of Kanyakumari district during the April 18 Lok Sabha polls to the Kanyakumari Parliamentary constituency.
A division bench comprising Justices S.Vaidyanathan and Subramonium Prasad before whom the PIL filed by Rajkumar. A, district coordinator of Tamil Meenavar Koottamaippu, came up for hearing ordered notice to the Election Commission of India and posted after summer vacation, further hearing of the case.
In his petition, Rajkumar sought a direction to the ECI to file a status report with regard to deletion of nearly 45,000 voters by taking into account the voters list of 2016 assembly election and 2019 parliament election of six assembly constituencies of Kanyakynaru district. He also sought a direction to the ECI to hold reelection in the respective polling stations, where deletion of voters has taken place by including all the voters.
According to petitioner, the coastal villages of Thoothur, Chinnathurai, Kadiyapattinam, Rajakkamangalam, Thuraimanavalakurichi, Mullloorthurai, Idalakudi and other coastal villages witnessed mass deletion of voters. They were quite shocked when they visited the polling stations since they could not find their names in the voters list. Since most of the voters were fisher folk and most of the time they ventured into the sea for fishing, they could not check the voters list in advance. Since there was an apprehension that in view of the government's negligence in taking care of these coastal villages during the Okhi cyclone, the voters from these coastal areas may not support them during the Parliamentary election, had led to the deletion of voters, he alleged.
He contended that the conduct of the ECI was violative of Article 21 of the Constitution, since right to life includes right to have a free and fair election. The conduct of ECI was violative of Article 14 of the Constitution since the mass deletion of names of particular areas amounts to discrimination, he added.
