Made April Fools, feel independent candidates

Chennai: A day after the Election Commission of India cancelled the bypoll to RK Nagar, independent candidates and a section voters in RK Nagar are upset.
“I am victim of this democratic process called elections.

The person who offered cash for vote and those (voters) who shamelessly accepted it are happy and I ended up with a debt of Rs 40,000. The postponement has made me look like an April fool,” said an independent candidate, who staged a demonstration in front of the R K Nagar Returning Officer’s chamber closed on Monday. “Election Commission has done grave injustice to law-abiding independents. I was threatened of disqualification several times and insisted that I submitted all my expense details in advance, but this parameter was not followed for political parties,” rued an independent candidate P. Chakravarthy.

“It’s a shame on the part of the administrators who had failed to conduct a fair bypoll in RK Nagar. They should have disqualified the errant candidate for whom the cash was distributed and this act as demeaned our hardship and campaign efforts,” he added.

“What EC has done is not fair. We stand affected in the bigger political drama between BJP and other regional parties. ECI has lost its credentials in RK Nagar by failing to arrest the cash distribution and it also lacks the spine to disqualify the political party candidates who had induced voters,” said E. Ramadasan, who is the chief polling agent for Bhuvaneswari, an independent candidate. “My family has lost close to Rs 1 lakh and all my relatives skipped their meals during the campaign. Is the EC going to compensate for the losses,” asks Ramadasan adding that independents are to file a legal suit for compensation from EC.