Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam (AMMK) leader and R.K. Nagar MLA T.T.V. Dhinakaran has urged the Madras High Court to reject an election petition filed by independent candidate M.L. Ravi of Desiya Makkal Sakthi Katchi to declare his election from the constituency in December 2017 as null and void.
When his application to reject the election petition came up for hearing on Thursday, Justice S. Jayachandran directed the election petitioner to file his counter-affidavit within two weeks. Mr. Dhinakaran had also filed another application insisting upon the court to strike down almost all the pleadings in the election petition.
Mr. Ravi, in his affidavit, had stated to have secured 246 votes in the bypoll as against 89,013 votes obtained by the winning candidate out of the 1,76,890 valid votes polled during the byelection. He pointed out that Mr. Dhinakaran had obtained 40,707 votes more than his nearest rival E. Madhusudhanan of the AIADMK who had secured 48,306 votes.
‘Large-scale bribing’
Attributing the huge number of votes obtained by Mr. Dhinakaran to corrupt practices, the petitioner recalled that an earlier notification issued by the EC for conducting bypoll for the same constituency in April 2017 was rescinded due to complaints of large-scale corruption and bribing of voters.
Then Mr. Dhinakaran was slated to contest the bypoll as an AIADMK candidate and the allegation of corruption was primarily made against him and his cadre. Yet, no action was taken against him and he was allowed to contest in the bypoll held for the same constituency in December 2017 and get elected, the petitioner added.
He alleged that contestants like him, who faced the elections fairly without indulging in any kind of malpractice, were not allowed to campaign freely during the elections since Mr. Dhinakaran, Mr. Madhusudhanan and Mr. Ganesh, the three high-profile candidates in the bypoll, had flooded the constituency with their cadre.
The petitioner also pointed out that Mr. Dhinakaran’s supporter P. Vetrivel, a disqualified MLA, had released Jayalalithaa’s video on a hospital bed, just a day before the polling and claimed that such a release also amounted to corrupt practice since it had a profound effect on the voters who were swayed by a wave of sympathy.
