A delegation of AIADMK MPs on Monday told the Election Commission that names of over 42,000 voters were deleted from the electoral rolls in Pennagaram assembly constituency in Tamil Nadu where the bypoll has been put on hold by the poll panel.
The MPs from both Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha met Chief Election Commissioner Navin Chawla and other Election Commissioners S. Y. Quraishi and V. Sampath and demanded a proper inquiry be conducted regarding the deletion of such a large number of voters.
Claiming that AIADMK had polled about 47,000 votes in the constituency in 2006 assembly polls, senior AIADMK leader M. Thambidurai told reporters that the final electoral rolls should be published only after looking into the matter.
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Rejecting the contention of ruling DMK that AIADMK was afraid of elections, he said AIADMK was ready to face elections and it should be conducted in a transparent manner.
In a memorandum to the EC, Mr. Thambidurai also alleged that the District Collector of Dharmapuri, under which the assembly constituency falls, was acting in a “biased” manner in favour of the DMK.
The Commission had earlier asked the Chief Electoral Officer to look into the complaints and decided to review the matter on February 17.
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Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi had said frequent postponement of the bypoll, initially slated for January 20, might lead to suspicion among people that the EC was “biased” towards opposition AIADMK.