Chennai, Sept 5:
Former Congress MLA from Velachery A.M.H. Nazeem Moulana has been barred from contesting elections for three years for allegedly failing to properly account for his election expenditure during the 2021 Assembly polls, the Election Commission has said.
In its order, the Election Commission said Moulana had failed to submit a true and correct account of his election expenses as required under the Representation of the People Act. The Commission said the discrepancy involved expenditure that was allegedly not fully disclosed in the account submitted by him.
According to the Election Commission, Moulana had declared election expenditure of around Rs 17 lakh, while another Rs 32 lakh was allegedly found to have been incurred but not properly reflected in his accounts. When the amount was added, the total expenditure was estimated at around Rs 49 lakh.
The Commission said this exceeded the Rs 30 lakh expenditure ceiling applicable to candidates at the time of the 2021 Assembly election. It observed that the failure to disclose the actual expenditure amounted to a violation of the statutory requirements governing election expenses.
The poll panel also noted that hearings scheduled in January and February did not result in Moulana appearing before the authorities to provide his explanation. The Commission said he therefore failed to satisfactorily account for the discrepancies in his election expenditure.
The Election Commission further said that concealing around Rs 30 lakh from the election expenditure account was a serious violation under the Representation of the People Act. It stressed that maintaining transparency in election expenditure was fundamental to the electoral system.
Based on its findings, the Commission has declared Moulana ineligible to contest Parliament or Assembly elections for the next three years.