The Kerala High Court on November 28 (Tuesday) set aside the election of Anirudhan K.S., SFI candidate, to the post of chairman of the college union of Sree Kerala Varma College, Thrissur. The court also directed the Returning Officer to carry out recounting of the votes polled for the chairman post in accordance with the provision of the election bylaws issued by the University of Calicut and declare the results.
Justice T.R. Ravi passed the directives after declaring that the counting and recounting of votes polled for the post of chairman were done not in accordance with the procedures prescribed by the university election bylaws.
The verdict was given by the court while disposing of a writ petition filed by Sreekuttan S., KSU chairman candidate, challenging the election of his rival candiate to the post of chairman.
According to the petition of Mr. Sreekuttan, his rival candidate was elected to the post during the recounting of votes done at midnight. In fact, the petitioner was initially declared elected as chairman. However, the Returning Officer had ordered recounting of votes despite the Principal taking objection to the recounting.
He alleged that the recounting was done due to the influences of several extraneous forces. The petitioner alleged that the counting and recounting were carried out not in accordance with the election bylaws. The petitioner pointed out that the votes declared valid at the time of counting had been invalidated during recounting.
The court, which had gone through the record produced by the Returning Officer, found that the invalid votes had gone up to 27 from 23 and that the number of NOTA also had come down from 19 to 18 during recounting. Besides, the rejected ballot papers did not contain endorsement by the Returning Officer as required under the bylaws.
The court observed that admittedly, votes that were earlier rejected were again included and mixed with the valid votes for the purpose of recounting. The said method followed is not permissible in view of the bylaws that admittedly govern the election.
The facts of the case showed that four votes that were initially treated as valid were treated as invalid at the time of recounting. Since no endorsements had been made, it was not even clear whether all the 23 votes that were initially found to be invalid were treated as invalid during the recounting. Besides,the Returning Officer who is the authority to hold the election has himself admitted that the procedure for the counting has not been followed, the court added.
