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Tamil Nadu CM Jayalalithaa's election challenged in Madras High Court

by IBNS 26 Oct 2015, 10:52 pm

Chennai, Oct 27 (IBNS) The Madras High Court has issued notice to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa on a petition challenging her election, reports said.

The petition has been filed by T Suresh, an independent candidate, whose nomination papers for the June 27 bypoll to RK Nagar constuency were rejected.

Justice Pushpa Sathyanarayana  ordered notice to Jayalalithaa, the Election Commission, state Chief Electoral Officer and the Returning Officer. 

The petition says Suresh's nomination papers were unfairly rejected by election authorities as there was a clerical error in the address submitted by one of the 10 proposers for his candidature. 

The hearing on another petition filed by social activist "Traffic" Ramaswamy  was adjourned for three weeks after the counsel for him submitted that the petitioner was hospitalised and sought time.

Suresh Kumar submitted that even though he had fulfilled the norms and the procedures of the elections as per the rules of Representation of People Act, the Returning Officer had returned his nomination papers stating that he had not filed the nomination with 10 proposers.

He submitted that the nomination was rejected on the ground that one of the proposer's address was wrongly mentioned in the voter identity card.  

Though the mistake was clerical in nature, and the proposer had submitted a correction form about a year ago, the officials rejected the nomination, it complained. 

The petition wanted the court to declare as illegal the rejection of his nomination papers as improper and invalid, and consequently set aside the election of Jayalalithaa as MLA from RK Nagar constituency.