No powers to recover all expenses incurred: EC to Madras HC

The Election Commission today submitted to the Madras High Court that it had no powers to recover all expenses incurred for conducting polls ahead of cancellation of elections to certain constituencies because of misconduct of candidates.
M Baskaran and G Kunjithapatham, PMK candidates for the Aravakurichi and Thanjavur assembly constituencies in the May 16 polls, had filed PILs seeking a direction to the Election Commission to recover all the poll expenses incurred from KC Palanishamy (DMK) and V Senthil Balaji (AIADMK).
They alleged that the Election Commission had seized huge amounts of money from these candidates in the assembly polls following which the polls were cancelled.

They prayed for a direction to the Election Commission to calculate the expenses incurred by the EC by appointing a statutory auditor as well as that incurred by the candidates including the petitioners and recover it from those candidates whose indulgence in electoral offences such as bribing voters resulted in rescinding of polls to these seats.
When the PILs came up before the first bench, comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice R Mahadevan, counsel for EC Niranjan Rajagopalan submitted that the EC had no powers to recover all the expenses.
The court then directed the counsel to file a counter within six weeks.

On May 27, the Election Commission had decided to rescind the notification and conduct polls afresh "in due course of time" to the two Tamil Nadu Assembly seats following evidence of use of money to influence voters.