The Madras High Court on Friday completed a recount of 1,508 postal votes and over 15,700 votes polled in electronic voting machines (EVM) during the 2016 Radhapuram Assembly elections, in which the AIADMK’s I.S. Inbadurai defeated the DMK’s M. Appavu by a slender margin of 49 votes.
However, the results could not be declared owing to an interim order passed by the Supreme Court even as the recount was on.
On Tuesday, Justice G. Jayachandran of the High Court ordered a recount of postal ballots as well as votes polled in 34 EVMs, counted by election officials during the 19th, 20th and 21st rounds on May 19, 2016. The order was in response to an election petition filed by Mr. Appavu, urging the court to set aside the election of Mr. Inbadurai.
Appeal to apex court
In accordance with the order, the recount began in the High Court premises on Friday. Within hours, the Supreme Cout heard an appeal by the MLA, challenging the High Court order, and restrained the latter from declaring the results of the fresh count. The interim order passed by Justices Arun Mishra and S. Ravindra Bhat read: “Counting process may go on. However, results will not be declared. List on October 23, 2019.”
The recount took almost the entire day as the candidates as well as their representatives scrutinised each and every postal ballot and continued to raise objections on their admissibility.
After completion of the process, Mr. Appavu addressed the media and hoped that the court would soon declare the results. He added that the appeal before the Supreme Court would be handled as per the advice of party leader M.K. Stalin.
On his part, Mr. Inbadurai did not address the media, citing the appeal before the apex court.
According to the Election Commission of India, the MLA had secured 69,590 votes in the 2016 elections as against Mr. Appavu’s 69,541 votes. However, the latter, in his election petition, claimed that out of 1,508 postal votes polled in Radhapuram, the Returning Officer had rejected 300 votes as invalid on various grounds. A bunch of 203 postal votes were rejected on the presumption that government middle school headmasters were not gazetted officers and hence ought not to have attested the identity of voters. He further alleged that Mr. Inbadurai had secured a total of 8,710 votes in the last three rounds of counting but the figure was inflated by 348 votes.
After examining a host of witnesses including the Returning Officer, Justice Jayachandran came to the conclusion that there was prima facie substance in the submissions made by the petitioner. He also found that the Returning Officer had not recounted the postal votes before declaring the results though the rules mandate such a recount if the margin of victory was less than the number of postal votes polled in a particular constituency.
The judge also expressed displeasure over the Returning Officer having made a false assertion in his testimony on oath and ordered a recount of the contentious votes.
