The court 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.
Kerala High Court [File Photo]
The Kerala High Court on Tuesday set aside the election of SFI candidate Anirudhan K S to the post of chairman of the college union of Sree Kerala Verma college, Trissur.
A single bench of Justice TR Ravi 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. The court directed the returning officer to carry out the counting of the votes strictly in accordance with clauses V(13) and V(14) of the bylaw to the college union election.
The court 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.
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The court issued the order on a petition filed by Sreekuttan S, KSU Chairman candidate seeking fresh elections to the post.
In his petition, Sreekuttan has stated that his rival, SFI 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 documents produced in the court revealed that the KSU candidate had secured 896 votes while the SFI candidate garnered 895 votes. After the recounting of the votes, the SFI candidate secured 899 while KSU candidate got 889 votes.
During the hearing of the case, the court found that in the first counting, there were only 23 invalid votes and in recounting the invalid votes were increased to 27
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