CHENNAI: A PIL has been filed in the Madras High Court for a directive to the authorities concerned to file a status report on the issue relating to deletion of nearly 45,000 eligible voters in Kanniyakumari parliamentary constituency in the elections on April 18 and to hold re-election in polling stations where it had occurred.
A vacation bench of Justices S Vaidyanathan and Subramonium Prasad, before which the petition from A Rajkumar, district co-ordinator of Tamil Meenavar Koottamaippu, came up for hearing on Wednesday, ordered notice to the authorities concerned, returnable by June 12.
Petitioner contended that the mass deletion has raised a suspicion that the election authorities had made a statutory default in conducting a fair and free election, by removing voters’ names wantonly. The government, led by AIADMK, was apprehensive that the voters, who were severely affected by ‘Ockhi’ cyclone, would not cast their votes in its favour. The election authorities failed to monitor the situation and in their statutory responsibility to hold a free and fair election. It had been assessed by independent agencies that nearly 45,007 voters’ names had been deleted from the list.
This was evident from the fact there was a decrease in the number of voters between the elections in 2016 and 2019. This was contrary to the claim of the authorities there was nearly a five per cent increase of new voters in 2019 elections. The average voting rate of Tamil Nadu was 72 per cent, but Kanniyakumari witnessed only 69 per cent, the petitioner said.
The voting time was also wrongly printed in the booth slip. It stated 7 am. to 8 pm. Voters who turned up at the booths after 6 pm were shown the door, petitioner alleged. He sought to restrain the authorities from counting the votes on May 23 and to order re-poll in all the booths where voters names were deleted on a large-scale.