Chennai, Oct 5:
There is no basis to the allegation that Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Vijay has failed to fully disclose his assets in the nomination papers filed for the Perambur Assembly constituency, his counsel told the Madras High Court on Monday.
Vijay won from Perambur by a margin of 53,715 votes in the April 23 elections and also from Trichy East and a total of four petitions–three challenging his victory by Perambur voters S.Dinesh and T.N.Lakshmi Narasimman, and unsuccessful DMK candidate R.D.Sekar and one by unsuccessful DMK candidate S.Inigo Irudayaraj challenging Vijay’s win from Trichy East, which was since vacated by him as he chose to retain Perambur–were filed. The Chief Minister too filed pleas seeking the dismissal of these elections petitions.
When the final arguments on Vijay’s pleas commenced before Justice V Lakshminarayanan, his counsel cited Supreme Court judgments and Law Commission recommendations and argued that there was no basis to the allegations that Vijay had failed to disclose his assets in his nomination papers.
Earlier, when the final hearing commenced, the Judge allowed a a request made by senior counsel Srinath Sridevan, representing the Chief Minister, to hear the arguments one after another on the applications filed for rejecting each of the four election petitions, as there were certain differences in each case despite overlapping pleadings.
He began hearing the plea to reject Dinesh’s election petition first, and decided to take up the application to reject Narasimhan’s election petition thereafter, since they got numbered one after another.
Commencing his arguments in the first plea, Senior counsel Gopal Sankaranarayanan contended that there was no basis for the allegation of the Chief Minister not having made full and proper disclosure of his assets and liabilities. He took the court through the evolution of the legal requirement of candidates disclosing their assets, beginning from the 170th Law Commission report submitted in 1999, which recommended such a measure for the first time and also a catena of judgments that were delivered on the issue thereafter.
As the arguments on behalf of Vijay were not completed, the judge adjourned the hearing to Tuesday.
Two petitions challenging PWD and Sports Development Minister Aadhav Arjuna’s victory from Vilivakkam seat in Chennai was also filed by DMK candidate Karthik Mohan and voter Sivaraj and the Minister too moved the Court seeking to dismiss the pleas.
It may be noted that in line with the High Court directive, Vijay and Aadhav Arjuna had on August 27 moved the Court seeking dismissal of the poll pleas challenging their victories in the recent elections.
Both Vijay and Aadhav Arjuna filed the petitions after the court, during the August 25 hearing, warned of imposing a cost of Rs 50,000 each on them for seeking repeated adjournments for filing petitions seeking dismissal of the pleas challenging their poll victories. When their counsels sought two more weeks time, the Judge declined the prayer and pointed out that election petitions have to be disposed of within six months under Section 86 of the Representation of the People’s Act.
“The court was not bothered about personalities but only wanted to ensure that the election petitions are decided within six months”, the Judge said, following which counsels for Vijay and Arjuna assured the court that the applications would be filed within two days and requested the court not to impose costs.
Accepting it, the court refrained from imposing costs for the time being and adjourned the hearing to August 27 when both of them filed petitions to dismiss pleas challenging their poll wins.