The Madras High Court on Tuesday dismissed the first election petition that was filed in the court immediately after the 2016 Assembly polls in the State.
It rejected a plea by AIADMK candidate S.P. Rajendran to set aside the victory of DMK MLA P. Seethapathy in the Tindivanam (reserved) constituency by a margin of 101 votes on May 19, 2016.
Justice V. Bharathidasan agreed with senior counsel P. Wilson, representing the MLA, that an election could not be set aside purely on the basis of the oral testimonies of the election petitioner and his witnesses, unless there was clear and strong evidence compelling the court to accept the contention of the defeated candidate. In the present case, the litigant had failed to satisfy the court about the existence of any such strong circumstance, he said.
In his complaint, the AIADMK candidate claimed that on the day of counting, the MLA’s son, Senthil Murugan, handed over a bunch of postal ballot papers to the Returning Officer who, in turn, mixed them with the postal votes polled by the government servants. He claimed that the illegality was committed despite the objections raised by the counting agents of the petitioner as well as other candidates who had contested in the constituency.
His other claim was that an Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) in a booth at Tagore Matriculation Higher Secondary School in Jayapuram had malfunctioned at the time of the counting of the votes. Yet, the officials went ahead and took it up for counting. Elaborating his claim, the litigant said that a total of 729 votes got polled in that booth as per the records, but at the time of counting, the figure displayed by the EVM was only 722 votes.
Answering both the contentions, Mr. Wilson said the allegation that the MLA’s son handed over additional ballot papers to the RO was an imaginary claim not backed by evidence. Though the petitioner had claimed to have raised objections, no such document was filed in court, he pointed out. He also stated that the entire process of the counting of postal ballots was carried out in the presence of the counting agents of all candidates, and their signatures were also obtained.
Discrepancy in figures
As regards the discrepancy in the total number of votes polled in a particular EVM, the senior counsel said it was common to have negligible differences between the number of votes recorded on paper and in the EVMs because some aged and ignorant people in rural areas may not have pressed the button on the EVMs properly at the time of registering their votes.
Even otherwise, a difference of just seven votes would not benefit the petitioner, he added.
