Every one is prone to make mistakes and the Election Commission is no exception especially when it is confronted with extraordinary circumstances where two candidates contesting in a particular constituency carry identical names, initials and even the spelling.
A visit to the Election Commission's website (elections.tn.nic.in) would show that two candidates with the name P. Moorthy contested in Sholavandan constituency in the 2006 Assembly elections. While one of them was a Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) candidate, the other was an independent.
The similarity in their names had led to confusion in the website with the election commission interchanging the affidavits filed by them stating the details of their properties and antecedents.
A click on the DMK candidate's name in the website led to an affidavit filed by the independent and vice-versa!
The official candidate of DMK is a resident of Iyer Bungalow here. He is a land lord owning many properties. He also had a criminal case pending against him.
His father's name was S. Periyannan. However, a click on his name displayed an affidavit filed by the independent whose father's name was A. Ponnusamy.
The independent, hailing from Virudhunagar district, had declared in his affidavit that he had no cash reserves, immovable properties, jewellery, bank deposits, vehicles or investments in share market.
He had even left the educational qualification column blank. In the current Assembly elections too, two independents with a similar name — Krishnaveni — are contesting from the Sholavandan constituency.
But their initials differ. While I. Krishnaveni is the dummy candidate of PMK, N. Krishnaveni is contesting for Tamil Nadu Shiv Sena.
