HC dismisses plea challenging acceptance of nominations, imposes cost on petitioner

Chennai: The Madras high court has dismissed with a cost of Rs 3,000, a petition, which challenged the acceptance of nomination papers of DMK and AIADMK candidates for Aravakurichi assembly constituency election.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice R.Mahadevan dismissed the petition filed by A.P.Geetha, a Desiya Makkal Sakthi Katchi candidate for Aravakurichi assembly constituency.

Contending that the Election Commission of India had earlier annulled the election to the Aravakurichi assembly constituency due to the large scale electoral malpractices adopted by DMK candidate K.C.Palanisamy and AIADMK candidate V.Senthil Balaji, the ECI ought to have rejected their nominations for Aravakurichi assembly constituency election, scheduled to be held on November 19, Geetha filed the present petition.

The bench said the issue of acceptance of nomination of the candidates from the AIADMK and DMK party who were contestants in the earlier election which had been cancelled and the allotment of election symbol to them has been raised again and again in different proceedings and the court has already answered this question in view of the Election Commission having accepted the nomination and allotted the symbol. Yet, this issue continues to be raised before this court by different parties including the one by the petitioner, a candidate, now on the anvil of the election one day before. “We find, thus, such repeated endeavours a complete wastage of judicial time and consider it as a fit case where not only the petition should be dismissed but also costs should be imposed on the petitioner,” the bench added.