CHENNAI: The Madras High Court on Thursday refused to dismiss a petition from V P Duraiswamy, defeated DMK candidate, challenging the election of AIADMK nominee S Saroja, State Social Welfare minister, from Rasipuram Assembly constituency in 2016.
Justice V Bharathidasan, who dismissed a miscellaneous petition from Saroja, however, set aside a portion of the pleadings in the petition of Duraiswamy.
The judge was dismissing in toto and partly allowing two applications from Saroja, arising out of an election petition from Duraiswamy.
Originally, Duraiswamy had filed a petition challenging the election of Saroja, mainly on grounds of corruption.
Saroja, in turn, filed two applications, one to delete certain paragraphs in Duraiswamy’s election petition and the other to dismiss the election petition itself.
The judge, after carefully going through the pleadings of Duraiswsamy’s counsel V Arun in the election petition, more particularly the paragraphs which were sought to be struck off by Saroja, said that except the pleadings in paragraphs 11, 14, 15 and 17 of the election petition, which were vague and contained only general allegations and bereft of full particulars regarding the alleged corrupt practice, the pleadings in the other paragraphs, which Saroja wanted to be struck off, contained material facts regarding the corrupt practice allegedly committed by her.