The Hosur Assembly constituency held by P. Balakrishna Reddy has officially been declared vacant.
Tamil Nadu Assembly Secretary K. Srinivasan issued the notification after the Supreme Court refused to stay the former Youth and Sports Welfare Minister’s conviction in a two-decades-old rioting case. This takes the number of vacant Assembly seats in the State to 21.
With the disqualification of 18 MLAs and the death of former DMK president M. Karunanidhi and AIADMK MLA A.K. Bose, the number of vacant Assembly seats had gone up to 20 earlier.
The seat fell vacant on Tuesday after the notification. The Election Commission has now six months to hold bypoll to this constituency.
The former Minister was convicted by a special court in a case relating to unlawful assembly and rioting at Bagalur village near Hosur in 1998 and was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment.
The Madras High Court refused to stay his conviction and suspend the sentence, following which he approached the Supreme Court.
About 10 days back, the DMK presented a memorandum to the Speaker to declare the Hosur seat vacant. DMK president M.K. Stalin had said that it was surprising that the Speaker had not taken any steps to formally notify the vacancy to the Constituency. He had said that such a declaration was only a formality as per the judgment in the Lily Thomas case.
