NEW DELHI: Does the age-old trick of political rivals, anticipating neck-and-neck contests, sponsoring namesakes of their principal rivals as phantom candidates constitute a corrupt electoral practice? The question promises to set up an engaging debate in Supreme Court on Friday, considering some humdingers where the votes polled by the dummies exceeded the victory margin.
A bench headed by Justice B R Gavai is scheduled to hear a PIL by one Sabu Steephen, who through counsel V K Biju said when every vote counted in determining the true mandate of people, Election Commission must treat the subterfuge of putting up namesakes to draw away votes which may have headed the rival’s way as corrupt electoral practice.
He cited three instances from Kerala. One Satheeshan Pacheni lost by 1,820 votes while his namesake candidate polled 5,478 votes in 2009. That year, P A Mohd Riyas lost by 833 votes from Kozhikode, while four candidates with the name ‘Riyas’ cumulatively garnered 6,371 votes. In 2016, BJP state president K Surendran lost by 89 votes from Manjeswaram, where his namesake polled 467 votes.
In the ongoing general elections, former Tamil Nadu CM O Panneerselvam faces four more O Panneerselvams, the petitioner said.
“The petitioner is not claiming that all independent candidates are fake or that they have no right to contest. But EC must have an effective mechanism to weed out the phantoms set up to fraudulently wean away votes from a genuine candidate,” he said.
The petitioner has sought direction from SC to EC to “take urgent and appropriate steps to assess the background of namesake candidates and their campaigns after submission of nomination forms” and create a mechanism to weed out the deliberately put up namesake or dummy candidates.
A bench headed by Justice B R Gavai is scheduled to hear a PIL by one Sabu Steephen, who through counsel V K Biju said when every vote counted in determining the true mandate of people, Election Commission must treat the subterfuge of putting up namesakes to draw away votes which may have headed the rival’s way as corrupt electoral practice.
He cited three instances from Kerala. One Satheeshan Pacheni lost by 1,820 votes while his namesake candidate polled 5,478 votes in 2009. That year, P A Mohd Riyas lost by 833 votes from Kozhikode, while four candidates with the name ‘Riyas’ cumulatively garnered 6,371 votes. In 2016, BJP state president K Surendran lost by 89 votes from Manjeswaram, where his namesake polled 467 votes.
In the ongoing general elections, former Tamil Nadu CM O Panneerselvam faces four more O Panneerselvams, the petitioner said.
“The petitioner is not claiming that all independent candidates are fake or that they have no right to contest. But EC must have an effective mechanism to weed out the phantoms set up to fraudulently wean away votes from a genuine candidate,” he said.
The petitioner has sought direction from SC to EC to “take urgent and appropriate steps to assess the background of namesake candidates and their campaigns after submission of nomination forms” and create a mechanism to weed out the deliberately put up namesake or dummy candidates.
Denial of responsibility! Pioneer Newz is an automatic aggregator of the all world’s media. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, all materials to their authors. If you are the owner of the content and do not want us to publish your materials, please contact us by email – [email protected]. The content will be deleted within 24 hours.
:quality(85):upscale()/2024/05/14/989/n/43463692/9b9061396643e95b899e90.22096377_.jpg)
