Chennai: The Election Commission of India (ECI) has barred former Congress MLA (Velachery), Aassan Maulaana, from contesting assembly and general elections for three years for failing to submit an accurate account of his election expenditure during the 2021 assembly polls. Maulaana termed the action “biased” and said he would challenge it in court.According to an ECI notification dated Aug 28, Maulaana had initially declared election expenditure of ₹17 lakh. However, an investigation found an additional undeclared expenditure of ₹32 lakh, taking his total expenditure to ₹49 lakh, well above the permissible limit of ₹30 lakh applicable at the time.The commission had scheduled multiple hearings in Jan and Feb to allow Maulaana to explain the discrepancies, but he failed to appear. It subsequently concluded that he had deliberately withheld the true account of his expenditure, violated election law and disqualified him from contesting elections for three years.Maulaana questioned the timing of the action, saying ECI rules required expenditure-related issues to be examined within a year of the election. He said the commission had acted nearly five years after the 2021 polls. He also alleged that the ECI had wrongly attributed to his candidature the cost of an advertisement issued by the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee as part of the 2021 election campaign of party leader Rahul Gandhi.“Though former chief minister M K Stalin and three other candidates were also on the stage with Rahul Gandhi, the ECI included the entire advertisement cost in my candidature,” Maulaana told reporters.
