Chennai: Madras high court expects the byelection to RK Nagar Assembly constituency, which turned vacant since death of Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa on December 5 last year, to be conducted before December 31, 2017.
The first bench, comprising first bench comprising Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice M. Sundar, has made the observation when a PIL from KK Ramesh of Madurai came up for hearing on Monday.
The petitioner sought direction to the Election Commission of India and Union ministry of law and justice to conduct byelection to RK Nagar as it remains vacant since death of Jaya. The bypoll, an-nounced by ECI, was cancelled on April 9, 2017 following largescale irregularities. ECI and other authorities failed to contain the flow of cash for vote by political parties during electioneering. The non-conduct of byelections to the constituency is injury to the democracy and the society and Election Com-mission has no courage to conduct elections in a free and fair manner, he said.
Counsel for ECI has submitted that the comm-ission has been monitoring the situation closely. The bench said "it is expected that ECI will announce election date at the earliest and conduct the poll by December 31, 2017.
