MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of Madras HC ordered status quo on the co-operative elections and sought report from the Cooperative Societies Election Commission on a petition praying to conduct re-elections to the societies. R Sakkarapani, DMK Whip and Oddanchatiram MLA, in his PIL petition, submitted that the State Election Commission for Cooperative Societies on March 5, 2018 in its proceedings declared elections for the 18,435 societies which are basically primary agricultural societies and other cooperative societies that fall under 14 departments, in four phases.
The MLA submitted that in the elections to 4,698 societies in the first phase and 4,479 societies in the second phase, except where the elections were postponed, the Cooperative Election Commission officers rejected the nominations filed by the opposition parties and declared the ruling party candidates as elected. Contending that the nominations filed by the other party members were not scrutinised and no reasons for rejection were given in the nominations, the petitioner argued that the elections were not conducted fairly according to the cooperative societies election laws.
Pointing out the flaws in the first two phases of cooperative elections, the petitioner prayed to the court to declare the announced cooperative elections as unconstitutional and void and sought a direction to conduct free and fair re-election to all cooperative societies.Countering this, the government advocate submitted that there were no violations in the Phase I and II of cooperative elections and the elections were conducted in a fair manner.Hearing the arguments, a Bench comprising Justices C T Selvam and A M Basheer Ahamed ordered status quo on the election process and directed the Cooperative Societies Election Commission to file a detailed report on the nominations of candidates on April 11. It is to be noted that the first two phases of elections were completed on April 2 and 7 and the third and fourth phase were scheduled for April 16 and 23 respectively.
Nomination process nixed
Joint Registrar Nadukattu Raja cancelled the third phase of election nomination in Nagercoil as the locals and the Congress staged a protest and demanded investigation into alleged misconduct. Four phases of election for 464 cooperative societies have been scheduled on different dates at various offices in Kanniyakumari district. While the first phase of the election for 114 was completed, various parties submitted petitions alleging misconduct and requested for re-election. In the meantime, the second phase of election for 115 cooperative societies in the district was initiated and voting was held on April 7. For the third phase, the nominations were accepted on Monday.
Members of the Congress and the public alleged that as many as 5,000 candidates from a total of 8,000 nominations had been selected, and that 3,000 were rejected without a valid reason. The rejected candidates staged a protest in Parvathipuram on Monday. The members also damaged materials in the office on Monday.
Malpractice alleged
According to the petitioner, the Cooperative Election Commission officers rejected the nomination papers filed by aspirants belonging to the opposition parties and declared the ruling party candidates as elected