RK Nagar voters flooded with cash, gifts

Chennai: Amid all the heavy traffic of charges and counter-charges on money and gifts being doled out in RK Nagar to garner votes in the December 21 bypoll, there was high drama at Periyar Salai in the constituency on Saturday as a local AIADMK functionary was 'caught' by rival DMK men with money they alleged was 'cash-for-votes'.

Seventy-years-old N. Anbukarasu was held at the Kodungaiyur police station for about three hours and was released after registering a case and seizing Rs 2.58 lakh he had in his possession. “It's true that Anbukarasu is an AIADMK man. We could not arrest him for lack of evidence to show he was distributing the money for votes. He claimed it was for genuine election expenses but since he had no proof to back that, we seized the money and remitted in the treasury. And we let him go”, said Inspector C. Pugazhendi, explaining why the old man was detained despite all the protesting by his DMK captors.

“The culprit was let off because he belonged to the AIADMK. We will consult our lawyers to pursue this case”, DMK area secretary S.M. Parasuraman told Deccan Chronicle. Explaining the 'catch', he said he had rushed to Annai Satya Nagar in Periyar Salai in the afternoon on receiving information that the ruling party was distributing money to the voters. “We caught Anbukarasu with Rs 2.58 lakh along with the electoral list. We heard he was getting ready to distribute Rs 6,000 per vote”, he said.

But when the DMK team took Anbukarasu to the local police, they would not register case and redirected them to the 'flying squad' of the poll commission. “After much persuasion, the station merely registered the case but refused to write an FIR. We had our election work to do, so we left the place”, said Parasuraman.

AIADMK presidium chairman E. Madhusudanan dismissed the DMK charge as a lie. The members of the rival faction chief TTV Dhinakaran and the opposition DMK wore AIADMK dhoties and carried the party symbol, two-leaves, while distributing money “to project as if AIADMK people are involved in this kind of activities in order to withhold the present byelection”, he said in complaint to the election officials. Further, these rivals “are forcefully getting hold of our party people and voluntarily and forcibly thrusting money into their pockets and creating a scene in front of the general public and the election officials to target our party and by doing this, they have been planning to distribute money to the voters”, said Madhusudanan , the AIADMK candidate in RK Nagar.

In another complaint letter to the EC, he called for probe into the sale of pressure cookers worth Rs 1.50 crore by a shop in Royapuram in just the last five days, whereas the shop “did not transact any business for the last three years” as per its I.T and sales tax returns.  He alleged that the cookers were ordered by Dhinakaran, whose symbol was pressure cooker.

TV18 channel had an interesting 'exclusive' showing a large turnout of people, including women and elders, outside the Egmore residence of N. Balaganga, former AIADMK MP, and claimed that the crowd came with their IDs to claim Rs 6,000 for each voter. “It's totally false. We only had a meeting of party workers at my place to verify the voters' list. No money distribution took place”, Balaganga told DC.

Meanwhile, senior Indian Revenue Service officer Vikram Batra, rushed to Chennai by the Election Commission to take charge as 'special chief electoral officer' to try halting the money flood in RK Nagar, held consultations with 'fatigued' ground level officers on Saturday. He was the special CEO in April when the bypoll was cancelled and it would come as no surprise if the murky history repeats itself.