The election in Vellore, Tamil Nadu, might get canceled

Election Commission has been rejuvenated. Yesterday, they put a temporary ban on Yogi Adityanath and Mayawati. Today, they are planning to cancel polls in Vellore, Tamil Nadu. The reason is simple – abuse of money power. Seizures of cash from DMK leaders over the last two weeks inspired them to recommend this extreme solution to the President of India.

Vellore is scheduled to go to polls with the rest of Tamil Nadu on April 18. It is unclear whether the two Assembly seats, Ambur and Gudiyattam, under the Vellore LS seat, facing bypolls will also be countermanded or go as planned on Thursday. Once notified by the President. If it happens, Vellore would be the first Lok Sabha seat to have had its elections countermanded over abuse of money power.

Tamil Nadu is quite notorious for the money power-play. In 2017, EC had countermanded elections to the Dr. Radhakrishnan Nagar Assembly seat in Tamil Nadu twice. In April 2016, during the TN Assembly elections, the EC postponed polls in Aravakurichi and Thanjavur, after cash running into crores was recovered from sites belonging to persons close to the AIADMK.

The EC’s recommendation was sent in wake of cash seizures from the premises of DMK veteran leader and party treasurer Duraimurugan’s son Kathir Anand’s house in Vellore on March 29. Subsequently, on April 1, based on information that illegal cash was being moved from a college owned by the Duraimurugan family to a cement warehouse in Vellore, a second I-T search was launched and Rs 11.53 crore was seized.

Parties are raining the cash in election despite the Election Commission’s guidelines on expenditure on a constituency. If such things persist, then the elections would again become the power play of money. Election Commission was dormant in the past but now active and ferocious like a tiger. Let’s see if the elections in India improve and become fair.