Plea to refund election expenditure for cancelled Thiruvarur bypolls rejected

Chennai: The Madras high court has dismissed a petition from a candidate of Naam Tamilar Katchi, which sought a direction to the Election Commission of India to formulate a guideline/policy to be followed by them before canceling any election and consequently to pay Rs 1 crore as compensation and Rs 1.5 lakh towards expenses spent by the party during the cancelled Thiruvarur bye election.

A division bench comprising Justices S.Manikumar and Subramonium Prasad dismissed the petition filed by Sahul Hameed.

The bench said petitioner has to approach the common law remedy if he or the party to which he is related has incurred expenditure and suffered damages. Petition is not maintainable and dismissed, the bench added. According to petitioner, he is a member of Naam Tamilar Katchi.

The Election Commission of India had issued a press release dated December 31, 2018 announcing bye election to the Thiruvarur constituency to be held on January 28, 2019.

The Naam Tamilar Katchi had announced his name as the candidate for the bye election. Following this decision, he and his supporters started their election campaign by meeting the people regularly, he added.

He said when the election was declared on December 31, 2018, the constituency was in bad shape as the constituency was affected by the Cyclone.

He came to know that even the state government sent a report to that effect and requested the ECI not to conduct the election till the people get recovered from the cyclone losses.

Despite that the ECI had announced the election with an ulterior motive. However, all of a sudden on January 6, 2019 the ECI had cancelled the election without following the due process of law. Due to which, he suffered a loss of Rs 1.5 lakh which he spent during his campaign. Therefore the ECI has to pay the amount of Rs 1.5 lakh besides `1 crore towards compensation for the mental agony suffered by him, he added.