Orders on RK Nagar bogus voters’ case reserved

Justice TS Sivagnanam and Justice K Ravichandrabaabu reserved its order on the plea without announcing a date.

Earlier, EC’s counsel Niranjan Rajagopal on filing a couple of affidavits on the action taken in weeding out bogus voters, submitted that the commission had taken all appropriate steps to conduct the December 21 by-election in a fair and transparent manner.

Accepting that 1,900 multiple entries exist and the same will be placed in the ASD (Absent, Shifted, dead) list, Niranjan submitted that the ASD list would be placed in all the booths and hence no impersonation of voters was possible.

He also submitted that the court has no power to interfere in the electoral process once election notifications are issued and any grievance thereafter ought to be raised through an election petition.

Coming down strongly against their submission, senior counsel P Wilson appearing for DMK said, “The EC is giving a premium to illegality. When the commission itself has acknowledged that 45,000 bogus voters were on the rolls and ready to delete them before the court, they have not deleted the multiple entries and bogus voters.”

Wilson also submitted that the EC has played ‘fraud’ on the court in previous hearings by submitting communication and undertaking to remove the multiple entries and bogus voters. Having done so, and not acted to remove it constitutes fraud. He said the ASD list was namesake and previous experiences have revealed that it’s a mere formality.

It may be noted that on Friday, the DMK had charged the EC with making a false representation and it intends to move a plea for perjury against the EC officials.