In what could be a major relief to Congress strongman and former union finance minister P Chidambaram, AIADMK leader Raja Kannappan quit the party and joined the DMK on Monday. Raja Kannappan had filed an election petition in Madras High Court challenging the election of Chidambaram from the Sivaganga Lok Sabha constituency in the 2009 General Election. Though it is more than decade since he filed the petition, the case is getting dragged on much to the relief of Chidambaram.
The victory of Chidambaram in the 2009 election was shrouded in controversy from the day the results were announced. Though the returning officer initially declared that Chidambaram lost the election, the former had to retract the announcement. At the end of the day Chidambaram was declared elected by a wafer thin majority of 3354 votes, the lowest margin of victory from south India.
Raja Kannappan’s argument was that the data entry operators employed in the counting station by the then DMK government entered the votes polled by him in the account of Chidambaram and vice versa. J Jayalalithaa, the then Leader of the Opposition herself wrote to the Chief Election Commissioner stating that Chidambaram’s win was by fraudulent means and not based on the votes cast by the electorate.
Chief minister J Jayalalithaa, in a letter to the chief election commissioner in 2011 had said that during counting of votes in the 2009 Lok Sabha election , ‘blatant irregularities’ were committed by the Data Entry Officers at Sivaganga to further the poll prospects of Chidambaram.
Jayalalithaa said in the letter that 3400 votes polled by Kannappan from 11 polling stations were entered in favour of Chidambaram and 1617 votes polled by the later were entered in favour of the AIADMK candidate. She said this was done by the DEOs at the behest of the then DMK government and no action was taken against the operators who indulged in such grave offences.
“The votes that were physically entered by the counting agents/ counting officers of Kannappan were deliberately changed by the DEOs at the time of making entries in Form-20. A comparison of the hand written entries made by the counting agents of Kannappan and the entries made by the Data Entry Operators in Form 20 would clearly reveal that the votes polled in favour of Kannappan were entered with mala fide intention to favour Chidambaram and facilitate his fraudulent victory,” Jayalalithaa had told the CEC.
Though the case was filed in 2009, the court is yet to complete the hearing . “For five years, Chidambaram played all tricks to get the case derailed. Once the court agreed to take up the case, it took us nearly three years to collect the evidences and submit the evidences. Then there were the routine delays due to retirement of judges and court holidays,” explained Saravana Kumar, the Madas High Court lawyer pursuing the case.
He said though Raja Kannappan had crossed over to the DMK, it would not affect the case. “He would not be able t withdraw the case as that stage is over. We expect the court to pronounce the verdict in this year itself” said Saraana Kumar.
Raja Kannappan jumped the fence on Monday and went to the DMK camp as the AIADMK leadership overlooked him while selecting the candidates for the Lok Sabha election. Chances are that his case against Chidambaram may remain as the longest fought election petition in the country. Tamil Nadu electorate are electing their MPs on April 18 and there is no possibility of any verdict in this case by that time. As tennis commentators say, it is Advantage Chidambaram.