Observing that it shall not encourage cases filed on the basis of information collected from tea shop banter, the Madras High Court on Wednesday refused to entertain a writ petition to declare as null and void the general elections for 38 Lok Sabha constituencies and byelections for 18 Assembly constituencies held in the State on April 18.
A Division Bench of Justices R.M.T. Teekaa Raman and P.D. Audikesavalu held that there was no merit in the writ petition filed by P.S. Aziz Ahmed, 70, of Ambattur since it had been filed because of certain discrepancies in voting percentage reported in the media immediately after the election day and the revised figures released a day thereafter.
The petitioner claimed that the discrepancies led to a plausible conjecture that the elections in the State had not been conducted freely and fairly.
Mismatch in affidavit
However, his petition was not numbered by the High Court Registry because of a mismatch between the prayer sought by him in the writ petition and the prayer in the affidavit filed in support of the petition.
When the case was listed before the Division Bench for deciding its maintainability, the Bench upheld the objections raised by the registry.
After hearing the petitioner’s counsel, the judges gave her the option of withdrawing the case. But she refused to do so and therefore the judges went on to pass orders on merits.
Earlier, the judges rejected an oral mentioning made by an advocate to order repoll in booth number 281 of Ponparappi village in Chidambaram parliamentary constituency since 275 voters in the village were prevented from exercising their franchise due to a caste clash on the day of election.
They said such a plea could not be entertained a day before the votes were to be counted and advised the counsel to agitate the grievance by way of an election petition after the counting process gets over.
