CHENNAI: Madras high court on Thursday dismissed as not maintainable a plea by DMK chief M K Stalin seeking to nullify the victory of TVK MLA V S Babu from the Kolathur assembly constituency. The plea was moved on the grounds of malfunctioning, mismatch, and discrepancies in the electronic voting machines (EVMs) during post-counting verification.The first bench of Chief Justice Sushrut Arvind Dharmadhikari and Justice G Arul Murugan passed the order on Thursday.Stalin had sought 100% counting of the VVPAT and checking and verification of all the 286 electronic voting machines used in the constituency.According to Stalin, he submitted an application for the post-counting checking and verification of the EVMs on May 7. But ECI conducted the exercise only from July 29 after a 45 days-delay.Supreme Court has mandated the ECI to hold the post-counting checking and verification of 5% of the EVMs used in a constituency. Total 14 machines were to be checked, and three of the four machines in the first batch were not functioning; so, another four were selected, of them one was not functioning, he said.He added that since ECI held the check after 45 days’ delay, he could not file an election petition and so the bar under Article 329 of the Constitution will not apply in this case.ECI submitted that the remedy for the petitioner lies in the election petition under section 80 of the Representation of the People Act and not a writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution.They noted that there is a bar on such petitions as per Article 329 (B) of the Constitution and that the petitioner should have approached the ECI before the lapse of the 45 days for holding the post-counting check.
