Chennai: The Madras high court has directed the Election Commission of India to conduct the by poll to RK Nagar assembly constituency by December 31.
Closing a petition from DMK organisation secretary R.S.Bharathi, the First bench comprising Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice M.Sundar said, “It is expected that the ECI will announce the election date for the RK Nagar Constituency at the earliest and conduct the election within December 31, 2017 as earlier directed by us in our order dated September 18, 2017”.
In his petition, Bharathi sought a direction to the Election Commission of India and the state Chief Electoral officer to “purify” the voters list pertaining to the RK Nagar Assembly constituency.
Recording the submissions of Niranjan Rajagopal, counsel for ECI that 100% verification was done by 256 booth level officers and checked by 25 supervisors and cursory verification was done by assistant electoral registration officer of the constituency and large scale deletion of 45,819 voters occurred due to the frequent migration of urban public and also due to the death of some voters, the bench said the deletion should be put up by the ECI in its website by tomorrow.
The bench also rejected the ECI’s apprehension that there was a possibility of candidates and their supporters bribing the voters if polling was held during festivals like Pongal and Christmas.
