Cash-for-votes That Marred An Election

- G.C.Shekhar 

BYELECTIONS in Tamil Nadu are usually listless affairs. the victory of the ruling party is a foregone conclusion like a fixed cricket match. But this one was made—and unmade—by lists.

But for the election commission (EC) showing the red card at the last minute, the lists would have hijacked the RK Nagar byelection.

And as lists go, these should count as unique. They had the names of all the top ministers of Tamil Nadu, including the chief minister. Against their names were columns that showed number of voters under their charge and the amount to be distributed among them.

Any doubts about what the list was dispelled by one look at the top. There was a small photo of Jayalalitha next to the heading—“RK Nagar Assembly Bypoll 2017 candidate T.T.V. Dinakaran, depu­ty general secretary”—and below that “Election Committee”. When the income tax (IT) authorities chanced upon this list, they realised they had stumbled upon an unexploded bomb in Tamil Nadu’s well­entrenched “cash for votes” scam. “It was a tell­all about how the cash distribution machinery worked as another set of documents disclosed how much money would reach each polling booth,” says a senior IT officer.

The EC report, while cancelling the April 12 poll, puts it succinctly: “The income tax authorities have also inf­ormed that several complaints were received recently indicating that health minister Dr C. Vijayabaskar is the main person involved in bribing the voters in RK Nagar Assembly constituency,which is going to bypolls on April 12, 2017. Incriminating documents in the form of overall money distribution chart to several leading political exec­utives and functionaries totalling Rs 89 crore for further distribution among the voters were found from the premi­ses of Dr Vijayabaskar.”