Chennai, Dec 16 (PTI): The Election Commission of India on Wednesday informed the Madras High Court that it has directed the Chief Electoral Officer of Tamil Nadu to file a fresh complaint against those accused of bribery in the RK Nagar bypoll.

The EC's reply was in resposnse to the November 15 order, directing it to file a reply by December 18 on a plea by defeated DMK candidate Maruthu Ganesh, seeking access to some documents submitted to the court in a sealed cover.

When the matter came up today before Justices M Sathyanarayanan and R Hemalatha Niranjan Rajagopalan, counsel for the Election Commission produced a communication dated December 16, stating that the Commission in its October 21 letter, had directed the CEO, Tamil Nadu to take necessary steps to file fresh complaints or FIR against those involved in these cases on the charges of bribery and corruption.

The CEO had sought some clarifications on the matter and the EC in two letters in November and December, had sought certain clarifications from Central Board of Direct Taxes for intimating the current status of assessment on bribing of voters and other unaccounted expenses, which is awaited.

Recording the submissions, the bench posted the matter to January 23

The matter relates to searches and seizure of documents by the Income Tax department at various places on April 7, 2017 in connection with bribing of voters, which led to the cancellation of the polls then.

On a direction by the EC, the Returning Officer of the constituency had lodged a police complaint on April 27, based on which an FIR was registered.

A batch of cases, including by advocate MP Vairakannan and Maruthu Ganesh, were filed seeking a CBI probe into the alleged irregularities in the constituency. Ganesh had in his petition claimed that there was prima facie material to prove the collusion of officials of Prosecution,ECI and the investigating agency.

In September this year, the state government had informed the High Court that it would not go on appeal against the order of a single judge quashing an FIR related to alleged electoral malpractices committed during the by-election to the RK Nagar constituency here in April 2017. PTI COR

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