Monday, May 17, 2004
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Advts: Classifieds | Employment | Obituary | Tamil Nadu
By Our Special Correspondent
CHENNAI, MAY 16. The Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa, today dismissed as strange the demand by Democratic Progressive Alliance that the "AIADMK rulers" resign over mass deletions in the electoral rolls. The Tamil Nadu Government was not responsible for the deletions. It was the Election Commission, an independent body, which took decisions on inclusions and deletions, Ms. Jayalalithaa said. Noting that thousands of voters were left out, she said a majority of those removed from the rolls were All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam supporters. She alleged that the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam enrolled "lakhs of bogus voters." In a press release, Ms. Jayalalithaa asked whether any party would indulge in a deliberate act to defeat itself. "Will people believe this," she asked and accused the DMK of spreading a lie in a planned manner. The DMK yesterday accused the AIADMK Government of disenfranchising select groups in a planned manner to win the Lok Sabha elections at any cost. Ms. Jayalalithaa said the accusation was part of a strategy divert the people's attention. It was akin to a thief shouting "thief, thief" when he was being pursued to distract the people, Ms. Jayalalithaa said. The Chief Minister said that only the AIADMK was affected by the deletions. For instance, in a sample of a 1,000, the names of only three or four DMK sympathisers would have been removed; the remaining were AIADMK sympathisers, she claimed. Ms. Jayalalithaa said it was the AIADMK, which brought to the notice of the Election Commission the mass deletions on the polling day. The party presidium chairman, C. Ponnaiyan, lodged a complaint with the EC and the Chief Electoral Officer and demanded that the authorities investigate and take action against those responsible. The DMK passed a resolution only yesterday, she said.
Percentage of votes
Of the 4.73 crore voters, as many as 2.86 crores exercised their franchise. The AIADMK alliance got one crore votes, which was 34.9 per cent of the votes polled. But the seven-party combine put together by the DMK could get only 1.64 crore votes, she said. The Chief Minister said the AIADMK garnered 71 lakh votes in 1996 and now one crore votes. Between 1996 and 2004, the voter population increased by 48 lakhs. This meant that about 30 lakh new voters voted for the AIADMK. The one crore voters formed the party's vote-bank. The seven parties in the DMK alliance together secured only 64 lakh votes more than the AIADMK, she said. Had the voters, whose names were removed from the rolls, voted and the names of DMK bogus voters been weeded out, the AIADMK would have won the elections. But the media, instead of researching this, were putting out stories from their make-believe world, claiming that the people rejected the AIADMK. The truth could be hidden but no one could destroy it, Ms.Jayalalithaa said. Replying to the Janata Party president, Subramanian Swamy's contention that the government could be dismissed because it lost all seats in the election, she said that in 1994 a nine-judge Supreme Court Bench declared null and void dismissal of a State Government merely because the ruling party lost the parliamentary elections.
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