RK Nagar bye-election to be held before December 31: EC

Earlier in September, the Madras High Court had asked the commission to hold election to the RK Nagar Assembly constituency at the earliest, preferably before December 31. (Source: ANI photo)

The Election Commission (EC) on Thursday announced that the RK Nagar bye-election will be held before December 31.  The seat fell vacant after the death of former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa last year.

“EC will soon decide on holding the bye-election to the RK Nagar assembly constituency in Tamil Nadu which was cancelled on complaints of bribing of voters in April”, IANS quoted CEC Nasim Zaidi as saying.

The poll in the constituency which was scheduled to be held on April 12 this year, was cancelled by the EC in the wake of allegations of voters being bribed.

The Income Tax Department had said  that the V K Sasikala camp, which was fighting in RK Nagar in the bypoll under the name AIADMK (Amma), had paid close to Rs 90 crore to voters to buy support for its candidate T T V Dinakaran. The department had conducted searches at 35 properties of Tamil Nadu Health Minister C Vijayabaskar.

The EC team which was monitoring the bypoll had written to the commission, “Besides the documents proving crores of money spent to bribe voters, we have also received 120 video evidences of party men visiting voters and distributing currency. Out of 120 videos we received through WhatsApp, 100 are against T T V Dinakaran of AIADMK (Amma) and 20 are against the DMK candidate. This shows the veracity of violations that happened during this campaign.”

Earlier in September, the Madras High Court had asked the commission to hold election to the RK Nagar Assembly constituency at the earliest, preferably before December 31. After this, the court was also informed that an FIR had already been registered by the police over the alleged bribery of voters in the constituency.