CHENNAI: The Madras High Court has upheld the election of R Chinnaswamy (AIADMK) from the Singanallur Assembly constituency in the general elections held on May 8, 2006.
Justice C Nagappan upheld the election while dismissing a petition from A Soundararajan (CPM) challenging the election of Chinnaswamy, who won by a thin margin of 14 votes, on Monday.
The judge also imposed a cost of Rs 5,000 on the petitioner, payable to Chinnaswamy.
Petitioner, among other things, contended that the Returning Officer (RO) had not maintained the register or proper records regarding the postal ballot papers issued and received and there had been non-compliance of Rules 23 to 27 of the Conduct of Election Rules and that had materially affected the election result.
The RO had also failed to record the votes polled by each candidate in Part II of Form 17C, which amounted to non-compliance of Rule 56C(2) of the Conduct of Election Rules.
Dismissing the petition, the Judge observed that it was seen that entries had been made in result sheets in Form 20 then and there at the end of each round of counting and it was signed by the RO, the chief election agent of the petitioner and the agents of the returned candidate and other candidates acknowledging the correctness of the entries.
This would establish that the entries relating to the votes secured by each candidate had been made duly and correctly. Further, the entire process of counting was videographed and the cassette was produced before this court. No materials had been placed by the petitioner to show as to how the result of the election had been materially affected by the omission to fill up Part II of Form 17C.
Though there was non-compliance of Rule 56C(2) in not recording the votes polled by each candidate in Part II of Form 17C, it did not materially affect the result of the election.
Further, there was no complaint about the counting of votes in the 315 electronic voting machines and the counting was done after inspection of the control units by the election and counting agents present during the counting.
Similarly, there was no complaint about the entries that were made in the result sheets in Form 20 and the relief was also not pressed by the election petitioner.
Hence, there was no violation of any of the Rules, the judge said and dismissed the petition.