HC reserves order on DMK's plea over 'bogus' voters in R K

The Madras High Court today reserved its order on a petition filed by the DMK, seeking a direction to the Election Commission (EC) to remove 5,117 alleged bogus voters from the rolls of the bypoll-bound R K Nagar Assembly constituency here.
A division bench of justices T S Sivagnanam and K Ravichandrabaabu reserved its order after hearing the submissions of EC's counsel Niranjan Rajagopal and the DMK's senior counsel, P Wilson.
Rajagopal submitted that the poll panel had taken all appropriate steps to conduct the December 21 by-election in a fair and transparent manner.
Countering him, Wilson said the EC itself had acknowledged in the court that 45,000 bogus voters were on the rolls and that it had undertaken to delete them.

However, as on date, 5,117 bogus and multiple entries remained on the roll, he added.
The EC counsel said about 1,900 multiple entries existed and that the same would be placed in a separate list. There were about 2,200 more multiple entries which would be removed, he added.

He also argued that the court had no power to interfere in the electoral process once the poll notification was issued.
The petitioner's counsel alleged that the EC had played a "fraud" on the court during the previous hearings by undertaking to remove the multiple and bogus voters.
Citing Supreme Court verdicts, he said courts could issue directions in furtherance of elections and that there was no bar on the power of the high court to interfere in the matter.

The by-election is being held in the constituency to fill the vacancy caused by the death of then chief minister and sitting MLA Jayalalithaa on December 5 last year.