DMK candidate urges HC to review its order deleting paragraphs from election petition against Vijayabaskar

Justice C.V. Karthikeyan had delated certain paragraphs and refused to strike off a few others while partly allowing an application taken out by the former Minister

Viralimalai constituency MLA C. Vijayabaskar’s rival candidate M. Palaniappan of the DMK has filed a review petition in the Madras High Court against an order passed by it last year deleting certain paragraphs from the election petition challenging the former Minister’s victory in the 2021 Assembly elections.

Appearing before Justice C.V. Karthikeyan on Friday, advocate Richard Wilson, representing the election petitioner, said he had moved an application to review the order passed on November 29, 2022. The judge agreed to hear the plea for review on March 31 and directed him to serve the papers on the MLA’s counsel.

Immediately after the filing of the election petition in 2021, the MLA had taken out an application to strike out paragraph numbers 9 to 45 by invoking Order 6 Rule 16 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, which permits such a course if the pleadings are unnecessary, scandalous, frivolous, vexatious or tend to prejudice.

Justice Karthikeyan had partly allowed the application last year by striking off select paragraphs such as the one where it was alleged that the entire government machinery and government servants worked in favour of the MLA during the elections since he was the Health Minister of the State.

Holding that such generalised statements could not be allowed, the judge had also struck off the charge that the Electronic Voting Machines were tampered with when they were stored in the strongrooms and that the election officials turned a blind eye to complaints of irregularities even during counting of votes.

Similarly, the judge had also struck off the paragraph in which the election petitioner had accused the MLA of being unpopular due to his “tainted image” during his tenure as Health Minister and that his “association with the banned gutkha manufacturers is well documented.”

The judge had, however, refused to strike off a paragraph which alleged that the MLA had circulated printed cards amongst voters which were subsequently used to bribe them with cash and goods. He made it clear that the election petitioner would have to prove this charge during the course of trial in the election petition.