The Madras High Court has quashed a private complaint preferred by the Returning Officer of the Madurai Parliamentary constituency against former Union Minister M.K. Alagiri for having allegedly suppressed certain details regarding his assets while filing nomination for the 2009 Lok Sabha poll.
Justice M. Nirmal Kumar quashed the case after advocate R. Srinivas contended that the complaint was barred by limitation. The counsel pointed out that the Returning Officer (Collector of Madurai) had preferred the complaint before a Judicial Magistrate only in 2014 for an alleged offence committed in 2009. The charge pertained to non-disclosure of land owned by Mr. Alagiri in Tiruvarur. S. Jaganathan reported it in May 2013. The Returning Officer lodged the complaint in February 2014.
Noting that the complaint had been lodged under Sections 177 (furnishing false information) of IPC and 125A (penalty for filing false affidavit) of the Representation of the People Act of 1951, the petitioner said both legal provisions were pari materia (one and the same).
Since IPC was a common law and the Representation of the People Act was a special law, the petitioner said it was a well-settled position of law that only the provisions of a special law should be preferred by the courts when a person gets charged with similar offences under two different laws. He said Section 125A of the 1951 Act provided for maximum imprisonment of six months, and Section 468 of CrPC prohibited a court from taking cognisance of such a complaint after expiry of the limitation period of six months.
