CHENNAI: Pudukottai Collector and Returning Officer for the by-election to the chairman post of the Pudukottai municipality on Friday indicated that no fresh notification would be issued for the election nor would nomination papers be received afresh. He said all arrangements were on to conduct the elections in a fair manner.
Meanwhile, an official press release from the State Election Commission here said 4,914 nomination papers have been received for various local body posts and September 8 would be last date for withdrawing papers.
In a statement, the Pudukottai Collector, denied newspapers reports that claimed that the nominees of CPI and BJP were not allowed to receive nomination papers from the Returning Officer. Though the notification said that nomination papers could be filed till September 4, only seven nomination forms were received by aspirants and of them only three were filed till till September 3. On September 4, 36 forms were issued to various persons, including the BJP nominee. Besides, two independents had filed their papers that day.
When a few persons belonging to some political parties attempted to jump the queue, it was objected to by those already in the queue and the police had to regulate the queue. Following this, those who tried to jump the queue went observed a road roko. At 2.20 pm, the Tahsildar went to them and informed that sufficient arrangements were made to receive and file nomination papers. But ignoring this, they continued with their agitation and did not lodge a complaint with any election official. Only in the all party meeting convened by the RO, CPI and CPM lodged complaints, the Collector said.
PMK Backs BJP
PMK president GK Mani announced his party’s support for the BJP in the local body elections. MDMK leader Vaiko condemned the prevention of opposition parties from filing nomination papers in Pudukottai.
Plea challenges Govt Notification
Chennai: A public interest writ petition was filed in the Madras High Court challenging a government notification on the conduct of bypolls to local bodies. The first bench of Chief Justice SK Kaul and Justice M Sathiyanarayanan, before which the PIL from K Karthikeyan of Nangai Koundan Pudur in Coimbatore district came up for hearing on Friday, ordered notice on it. The petitioner sought to quash the notification dated August 27 this year of the TN State Election Commission giving the ‘programme of election’ for filling up the vacancies in rural and urban local bodies. As per the notification, the election will be conducted on September 18. The petitioner contended that the notification issued on August 27 was notified on August 28 itself. It was ex-facie illegal, arbitrary and against the law with reference to the Programme of Election, he claimed.