Election petition: Notice to Min, former minister

Justice V Bharathidasan, before whom the respective pleas came up for hearing, on accounting for the main grounds in the plea ordered notice to both Duraimuurgan and Vijayabaskar returnable on September 9. 

While the petition against Duraimurugan challenged his victory on a margin of just 1,178 votes “owing to the acceptance of invalid votes”, the election petition against Vijayabaskar was based on several grounds including bribery. 

The petition against the former health minister was moved by DMK candidate M Palaniappan from the Viralimalai Assembly constituency. He had contended that Vijayabaskar had won owing to corrupt practices that included the distribution of cash and various gifts as illegal gratifications to bribe the voters and usage of official machinery for the election campaign. 

Excess expenditure in wall painting advertisements, suppression of pending income tax proceedings in Form 26 affidavit, tampering of Seal Tag on the Electronic Voting Machine and various other discrepancies were also raised in the plea. 

The grant of declaration certificate to Vijaya Baskar on May 2, even before the completion of the counting and offering illegal gratification to the personnel who are in charge of the MGNREGA scheme in various villages in Virtalimalai constituency was also raised.