The Madras High Court on Tuesday upheld the 2009 election of Congress strongman P Chidambaram from Sivaganga Lok Sabha constituency putting an end to a 12-year old legal battle.
Justice Pushpa Satyanarayana dismissed the petition filed by Chidambaram’s rival Raja Kannappan of the AIADMK (who later joined the DMK) challenging the legality of the result. Kannappan had alleged that Chidambaram, the then Union Home Minister in the UPA Government led by Manmohan Singh had resorted to malpractices and corruption during the counting of votes. According to Kannappan, the Returning Officer had illegally added the votes secured by him in the Alangudi Assembly segment into the kitty of Chidambaram. If such illegality had not occurred, the petitioner was confident of having won the seat by a margin of 7,034 votes.
Pushpa Satyanarayana dismissed the petition stating that charges of corruption could not be proved. Chidambaram was declared elected by the Returning Officer by a margin of 3,354 votes after the entire national media reported that he had lost the election. But this was subsequently modified.
When it was initially announced that Chidambaram lost the election, the then home minister conceded the defeat. But counting of votes was stopped at this juncture for 30 minutes and later on the Returning Officer declared that Chidambaram had scraped through.
Chidambaram who was cross-examined by the lawyers had told the court that he does not remember what transpired during the counting of votes as it took place more than a decade ago. He also denied charges that he resorted to corruption and bribe to win the election.
The fate of the case was almost sealed when Kannappan dumped the AIADMK and joined the DMK mid-way through. There were reports that he did not cooperate with the lawyers hired by him for the litigation. Interestingly, J Jayalalithaa, former chief minister of Tamil Nadu herself, wrote to the then Chief election Commissioner expressing concern over the alleged malpractices during the counting of votes at Sivaganga, Chidambaram’s home turf.
“The votes that were physically entered by the counting agents/ counting officers of Kannappan were deliberately changed by the Data Entry Operators 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 written in her letter.
The case got delayed mainly because of the delaying tactics deployed by the defendant who questioned the legality of admitting such an election petition and later on submitted procedural issues to delay the court proceedings. This will go down in Tamil Nadu’s history as the longest ever election petition suit heard by a court.
Chidambaram did not contest the 2014 and 2019 elections from Sivaganga and opted the safer route to Rajya Sabha. Though he got his son Karti the ticket for the 2014 election from Sivaganga, the first electoral outing turned out to be a disaster for the junior Chidambaram as he lost his security deposit. But he won the 2019 Lok Sabha election from the same constituency defeating H Raja of the BJP.