Madras HC notice to EC over Assembly elections; plea to debar candidates
CHENNAI: The Madras high court has ordered notice to Election Commission (EC) on petitions, which sought to debar DMK and AIADMK candidates of Aravakurichi Assembly constituency and AIADMK candidate of Thanjavur Assembly constituency from contesting any election until the expenses incurred by all other candidates are recovered from them.
Posting for August 9, further hearing of the petitions filed by M. Baskaran and G. Kunjithapatham, PMK candidates of Aravakurichi and Thanjavur constituencies respectively, a Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice R. Mahadevan said, “We would like to examine whether the Election Commission in view of the recent episodes is examining the aspect sought to be raised in the petitions”.
According to petitioners, the DMK candidate K.C. Palanisamy and AIADMK candidate V. Senthil Balaji had spent hundreds of crores of rupees in Aravakurichi constituency.
Similarly, AIADMK candidate M. Rengasamy spent hundreds of crores in Thanjavur constituency. Noticing the large scale violations, the EC had cancelled the elections to the two constituencies.
But the EC order was silent about whether these three candidates against whom prima facie allegations of bribing voters had been established could contest in future elections.
Further, EC had not clarified about the debarring of these candidates as per the Representation of the People Act (RPA) for indulging in electoral offences, they said. They said these elections have once again brought out the importance of some mechanism or amendment to RPA wherein EC on its own can disqualify/bar any candidate found to be indulging in electoral offences.
Since bribing of voters on a massive scale was a new scourge affecting the faith of voters in a free and fair election, it was high time the EC in consultation with the legislature incorporated necessary amendments to prevent mass bribing.
The corrupt practices of these candidates forced EC to order de novo elections. Therefore, they should be required to bear the cost of the now cancelled elections for no fault of others.
Therefore, the petitioners sent representations to EC to recover the entire cost of expenses incurred, including cost of all candidates from the three nominees, the petitioners said.
