The Madras High Court on Friday dismissed an election petition filed by Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) leader Thol Thirumavalavan challenging the victory of his opponent N. Murugumaran of All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) by a margin of 87 votes from the Kattumannarkovil Assembly constituency in 2016.
Justice C.V. Karthikeyan also awarded costs of ₹2,000 to Mr. Murugumaran. He pointed out that in the event of dismissal of an election petition, Section 119 of the Representation of the People Act of 1951 grants a discretion to the High Court to award payment of costs incurred by the returned candidate to contest the petition.
Security deposit
Further Section 121 states that the costs should be awarded from the security deposit made by the election petitioner at the time of filing of the case. Since Mr. Thirumavalavan had deposited ₹2,000 as stipulated under Section 117 of the Act, the judge ordered that the amount be appropriated and paid to the sitting MLA.
In the penultimate paragraph of his 129-page judgment rendered on merits and after a full fledged trial, the judge said: “I also understand that the election petitioner has now been elected as a Member of Parliament from Chidambaram constituency in the parliamentary elections held in the year 2019. This court wishes him well.”
Though the main ground raised in the election petition was the rejection of 102 postal votes by the Returning Officer, the judge ordered production of the rejected votes, perused them and expressed satisfaction over the decision to not count them since the attestation forms appended to those votes were not in a proper format.
In so far as the other allegation that the agents of the election petitioner were chased away by the police on the day of counting and the claim that the incidents were recorded by closed-circuit television cameras, the judge said: “Unfortunately, For the reasons best known to the election petitioner, he had not summoned the recordings.
“He had summoned the Returning Officer as a witness, but even then he did not seek for a direction that the witness must produce the copies of the recordings in the CCTV camera. In the absence of proof, this court cannot assume and presume facts... In view of the above discussion, I hold that the election petition necessarily has to suffer an order of dismissal.”
