CHENNAI: Claiming several irregularities in the counting of votes in Virudhunagar, DMDK has approached the Election Commission of India (ECI), requesting it to take steps for recounting of votes in the constituency under the supervision of a retired judge.
The party candidate, Vijaya Prabhakaran, had lost the parliamentary race by a margin of just 4,379 votes, the lowest in the state.
Addressing the media on Thursday, Premalatha Vijayakanth alleged officials attempted to count votes from the EVM machines that were out of sequence.
In his petition to the Chief Election Commissioner Satyabrata Sahoo and the Virudhunagar district collector, Vijaya Prabhakaran alleged that when he was leading by around 10,000 votes at noon on June 4, some DMK ministers visited the counting centre and interacted with the officers. Following this, his lead gradually declined and eventually resulted in Manickam Tagore’s victory.
Tagore told TNIE the DMDK candidate and his chief election agent Rajenthra Bhalaji were present at the counting centre until the final results were announced and did not raise any complaints at that time.
Meanwhile, Sahoo clarified to reporters that he was yet to receive their complaints.