Madras HC refuses to stay counting of votes polled in civic polls in Coimbatore

The first bench of Chief Justice M N Bhandari and Justice D Bharatha Chakravarthy, which rejected the interim plea, however, said the election of the successful candidates would be subject to the outcome of a PIL petition, which sought to cancel the elections and to hold them afresh.

The bench was entertaining a petition from V Eswaran, founder of Marumalarchi Makkal Iyakkam, who prayed for a direction to the Tamil Nadu State Election Commission (TNSEC) and the authority in Coimbatore to cancel the election held for the Corporation and form a committee, headed by a judge of the High Court to probe alleged incidents of rampant distribution of cash to voters by considering his representation and to hold it afresh.

Originally, the petitioner had moved the local authorities to permit him to campaign against bribing the voters, but it was rejected by them on February 7. He moved the High Court and the first bench last week had directed the authorities to consider his plea.

He was granted permission only on February 16 and left with just one day to campaign.

In his present petition, Easwaran alleged that there was large-scale bribing of voters. All the political parties in the race distributed cash and freebies to the voters. If the counting is allowed to be done on Tuesday and the result declared, dishonest people, who had mocked the democratic process, would come to power.

“In such circumstances, unless the same is restrained, the residents of our Corporation would be put into irreparable loss and hardships,” he contended and sought to restrain the authorities from counting the votes polled and declaring the results, which was turned down by the bench today.

The matter is adjourned for two weeks.