Chennai: As Tamilnadu started exercising the democratic duty to elect its 16th Assembly, V K Sasikala, a close-aide of late Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, could not cast her ballot as her name has been ‘removed’ from the voters list, as single phase polling began at 7 am.
Stating that Sasikala was sad on her name missing from the voters’ list, her counsel Raja Senthurpandian termed it is an ‘injustice’ and said legal action would be taken against those responsbile for it.
Sasikala’s name had figured in the Thousand Lights Assembly constituency in the city.
She was earlier residing at Jayalalithaa’s Poes Garden residence, which was later taken over by the ruling AIADMK to convert it into a public memorial after the death of the late leader in Decemebr 2016.
In February 2017, Sasikala was convicted and sentenced to four year jail term in the DA case. After she was released from the Bengaluru prison after serving the jail term early
this year, she had announced that she would stay away from active politics, while stressing the need for the continuance of the golden rule of Jayalalithaa.
According to Senthur Pandian, Election officials informed him that Sasikala’s name was deleted on 31 January, 2019, during revision of electoral rolls ahead of the Lok Sabha polls that year.
After coming to know about it last month, he met Chief Electoral Officer Satyabrata Sahoo and said no notice was sent to her before her name was struck off the rolls, which was an ‘injustice.’
Sahoo told him that the deadline to make inclusions or deletions had already ended, Pandian claimed.
While official communications from other arms of the government were addressed previously to the Parapana Agrahara Prison in Bengaluru, why was a notice on the deletion of her name not sent, he asked the top poll officer.
Sahoo replied that it was not clear as to who was responsible for it and also informed him that any process related to the matter could be taken up only after the election process ended.