EC cancels RK Nagar bypoll after allegations of Rs 89-crore ‘payoffs to voters [VIDEO]
- The polling in RK Nagar constituency was scheduled on April 12.
- The poll panel took the decision after several rounds of meetings with election officials of the state.
FollowBy-polls in Chennai’s RK Nagar constituency has been cancelled by the Election Commission after Income Tax department confirmed that money was distributed to voters, NDTV report confirmed.
Sleuths of the Income Tax Investigation wing conducted searches in properties and offices belonging to Tamil Nadu Health Minister C Vijayabaskar on Friday across Tamil Nadu.
The searches on premises of an associate of Vijayabaskar has revealed routing of Rs 89 crore for "distribution to voters" in R K Nagar Assembly constituency. During the raid, the I-T sleuths also found some documents, which indicated that in the RK Nagar constituency the Sasikala faction was literally buying each vote at a cost of Rs 4000.
The bypoll was necessitate following the demise of J Jayalalithaa on December 5 last year.
Since Jayalalithaa's death the AIADMK is split into AIADMK (Amma) under V.K. Sasikala and AIADMK (Puratchi Thalaivi Amma) under O. Panneerselvam.
In the last few days, there have been several complaints of cash in the RK Nagar constituency. More than 40 arrests have been made and nearly Rs15 lakh seized in the last one week, according to the EC.
