Elections to the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry are mired in controversy once again with a section of lawyers, unhappy with the ongoing vote counting process, forming a committee against alleged irregularities in the election. The committee has decided to address the media here on Saturday.
Incidentally, on Friday, a Division Bench of Justices S. Manikumar and M. Govindaraj enquired about the counting process with senior counsel R. Singaravelan, who is one of the special committee members administering the bar council at present along with Advocate-General Vijay Narayan and lawyer N. Chandrasekharan.
Providing details to the judges, the senior counsel said that there were over 53,000 members in the bar council, spread across the State. Polling was conducted in all districts on March 28 to elect 25 members. A total of 192 candidates were in the fray and every voter had to list all 25 preferences on the ballot paper.
Subsequently, the ballot boxes were brought to Chennai and safeguarded on the High Court premises. Initially, it was decided to begin counting on April 7. However, it got postponed due to various reasons.
Meanwhile, former High Court judges G.M. Akbar Ali and T. Mathivanan resigned from the posts of returning officers.
Acting swiftly, the Bar Council of India appointed another retired High Court judge M. Vijayaraghavan as the returning officer and the counting of votes commenced on April 25. The votes were counted district-wise and the process was going on despite problems created by some lawyers frequently, the senior counsel said.
Chaos at counting centre
“Even yesterday, there was chaos at the counting centre with some of the lawyers objecting to the way the votes were being counted. I had to rush to the spot to solve the issue. It is a very difficult process. Yet, we are doing our best to complete it as soon as possible,” Mr. Singaravelan told the Division Bench.
He said that the counting process was being streamed live on YouTube and a mobile application was available in Android phones to keep a tab on the progress made by the contestants. Since around 44,000 votes were polled, we divided it by 25 and said that any candidate who secured 1,760 votes would be declared winner.
“However, so far none of the candidates have secured 1,760 votes. The maximum number of votes that a candidate had secured was hovering around 1,300 votes. We may have to wait for some more time to complete the process,” he told the judges.
