The Madras High Court on Friday directed the Joint Commissioner of Police, Chennai (East) S. Manoharan to monitor the investigation into the alleged electoral malpractices during the R.K. Nagar byelection. The Election Commission (EC) had cancelled the bypoll due to large-scale money distribution.
A Division Bench of Justices M. Sathyanarayanan and Justice N. Seshasayee passed the interim order on a plea moved by an advocate seeking direction to the EC to take steps to file an FIR against Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami and others who are alleged to have been involved in the electoral malpractices.
The Bench then posted the plea to August 23 for further hearing. On June 23, the court took on record the reports submitted by the EC pertaining to the incidents of malpractice and the case diary submitted by the Abiramapuram police station where an FIR has been filed against unknown persons.
The Bench also wondered why the police had failed to array the names of persons mentioned in the EC’s report as accused in the FIR.
Column left blank
In response, the Advocate General had submitted that the initial reports available with the police did not contain any names, and hence, the column in the FIR was left blank.
Refusing to accept the contention, the Bench pointed out that even the report filed by the Income Tax department had mentioned names of several persons with their mobile phone numbers.
According to M.P. Vairakkannan, the petitioner, he had moved the PIL based on the response provided by the EC to his RTI query.
In its response, the EC had stated that it had directed the authorities concerned to register an FIR against Mr. Palaniswami, AIADMK (Amma) deputy general secretary T.T.V. Dhinakaran and four other Ministers, in connection with the alleged bribing of voters in the R.K. Nagar byelection.