NEW DELHI: Does the age-old trick of
political rivals
, anticipating neck-and-neck contests, sponsoring namesakes of their principal rivals as
phantom candidates
constitute a
corrupt electoral practice
? The question promises to set up an engaging debate in
Supreme Court
on Friday, considering some humdingers where the votes polled by the dummies exceeded the victory margin.
A bench headed by Justice B R Gavai is scheduled to hear a PIL by one
Sabu Steephen
, who through counsel V K Biju said when every vote counted in determining the true mandate of people, Election Commission must treat the subterfuge of putting up namesakes to draw away votes which may have headed the rival’s way as corrupt electoral practice.
He cited three instances from Kerala. One Satheeshan Pacheni lost by 1,820 votes while his namesake candidate polled 5,478 votes in 2009. That year, P A Mohd Riyas lost by 833 votes from Kozhikode, while four candidates with the name ‘Riyas’ cumulatively garnered 6,371 votes. In 2016, BJP state president K Surendran lost by 89 votes from Manjeswaram, where his namesake polled 467 votes.
In the ongoing general elections, former Tamil Nadu CM O Panneerselvam faces four more O Panneerselvams, the petitioner said.
“The petitioner is not claiming that all independent candidates are fake or that they have no right to contest. But EC must have an effective mechanism to weed out the phantoms set up to fraudulently wean away votes from a genuine candidate,” he said.
The petitioner has sought direction from SC to EC to “take urgent and appropriate steps to assess the background of namesake candidates and their campaigns after submission of nomination forms” and create a mechanism to weed out the deliberately put up namesake or dummy candidates.
