Income Tax report, police diary sought in by-poll issue

A division bench comprising Justice M Sathyanarayanan and Justice M Sundar, which heard the arguments by the EC’s counsel, the Advocate General appearing for the police and that of the petitioner’s counsel, said, “After hearing all the counsels this court is of the view that the annex to the letter dated April 18 of the EC and the Case Diary in crime 583/17 registered by Abhiramapuram police station are required. 

Respective counsels undertook to produce the same. Posted to June 23.” Earlier, when the case came up for hearing and advocate Duraiswamy appearing for the petitioner MP Vairakannan, said besides provisions available under Indian Penal Code (171 B) and section 123 in the Representation of the People Act, 1951, which deals with gratification to any person with the object of inducing him or any other person to exercise any electoral right or of rewarding any person for having exercised any such right, insisted that an FIR has to be registered against the persons involved. 

He noted that EC in response to a specific question, as what action has been proposed against Dinakaran, Palanisamy, Sengottaiyan, Velumani, Sellur K Raju, Thangamani and Vijaya Baskar, had said that the Commission has directed that an FIR may be filed by the Returning Officer in the instant case vide the Commissions’ letter dated April 18. 

However, as the bench was clarifying that it was a non-cognisable offence, the counsel appearing for the EC, said the plea was not maintainable as an FIR in the case was already filed in April. Handing over a copy of the same to the bench and the petitioner’s counsel, he said the police had handed over the FIR only on Friday, while he was dealing with another case pertaining to RK Nagar by-election.

Advocate General R Muthukumaraswamy stated that since the FIR has been filed and investigation is under progress, the plea was not maintainable. However, the petitioner’s counsel insisted that the socalled FIR was a blank paper, with not even a zero in it. He said the FIR will not stand the scrutiny of law as no names have been mentioned. 

But, the bench directed EC’s counsel to submit the annex which pertains to the report dated April 9, 2017, from the Income Tax department regarding a search action resulting in seizure of certain documents indicating large scale distribution of money to induce/bribe voter to influence the by-election in RK Nagar, which is an offence under section 171B of the Indian Penal Code.