Expressing shock over the 47,783 bogus voters whose names were found on the electoral rolls of the Radhakrishnan Nagar Assembly constituency, the Madras High Court on Wednesday said it expected the Election Commission of India (EC) to ban such voters for life from exercising their franchise, if they were found to have deliberately included their names in the voters’ list multiple times.
A Division Bench of Justices T.S. Sivagnanam and K. Ravichandrabaabu said similar action must be taken against political parties as well as their respective members, if the bogus voters were found to have been included in the electoral rolls at their instance, adding that they should be banned for life from contesting elections. “Unless such strong measures are taken and messages are sent, these sort(s) of evil attempts will continue, which will result in [a] mockery of democracy,” the judges said.
Praises DMK’s efforts
Appreciating the DMK for having made earnest efforts to get 45,836 names deleted and 1,947 names included in the ASD (Absent, Shifted and Dead) list, the Bench said: “These figures undoubtedly shock our judicial conscience as the total number of voters deleted so far is alarmingly high. In other words, equal to one-fifth of the present eligible voters was deleted. These deleted figures are not minimal or negligible.”
The court made the observations while disposing of a plea made by the DMK to reopen its writ petition for purification of the voters’ list. Expressing anguish and concern over 47,783 wrong entries having been allowed to remain in the electoral rolls until the court intervened in the matter, the Bench agreed with Senior Counsel P. Wilson, representing the petitioner party, that failure to delete those names would have certainly led to large-scale bogus voting.
The judges pointed out that the first Division Bench of Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice M. Sundar had disposed of a writ petition filed by the DMK on November 21, after recording the submission of the Election Commission that it had deleted 45,836 names from the rolls.
Subsequently, when the party claimed that there were still 5,117 bogus voters and wanted the court to reopen the case, the EC informed the court that it had included 1,947 voters in the ASD list.
Stringent measures
The Bench, led by Mr. Justice Sivagnanam, made it clear that stringent measures should be put in place to curb bogus voting during the byelection to the R.K. Nagar Assembly constituency on December 21.
Authoring the judgment, Mr. Justice Ravichandrabaabu said, “We strongly believe that the Election Commission will take all effective steps and ensure that a free and fair election will never be compromised on any account and the same will be achieved at any cost as the election is the sole lifeline of democracy.”
