CHENNAI : A division bench of the Madras High Court on Monday rejected a plea from a Madurai-based lawyer to cancel or postpone elections to the Madurai Lok Sabha constituency, scheduled for April 18, due to “heavy bribing of voters by AIADMK and DMK.” 

After issuing a warning to the petitioner K K Ramesh, also an independent candidate, that they will not hesitate to impose costs on him for filing a frivolous petition, a bench of Justices S Manikumar and Subramonium Prasad dismissed the petition. 

Earlier, Election Commission counsel told the judges that the allegation that an unregistered letter-pad party by name  "Sourashtra Munnetra Kazhagam" and AIADMK had jointly conducted a meeting in which the former had brought 4,000 people in various vehicles and that they were paid `500 each plus food tokens, sweets and snacks, were not substantiated.

He dismissed the allegation of the petitioner that at a public meeting at Pandikovil on April 7 last, the ruling AIADMK distributed Rs 500 to Rs 2,000 to each voter. The flying squad visited the place, but found nothing to substantiate the allegation, he said.