The Madras High Court on Saturday ordered the transfer of Madurai Collector S. Natarajan on a petition filed by CPI(M) candidate Su. Venkatesan, accusing the Returning Officer of inaction after a Tahsildar entered a storage room situated adjacent to the strong room containing EVMs of the Madurai Parliamentary constituency on April 20.
A Division Bench of Justices S. Manikumar and Subramanioum Prasad also ordered the transfer of Assistant Returning Officer M. Guru Chandran, the Collector’s Personal Assistant (General), Mohandas, the Assistant Commissioner of Police (Crime) and all others responsible for the breach of security. They were informed that Tahsildar Sampoornam had already been suspended.
In his affidavit, Venkatesan stated that the Tahsildar had entered the document storage room along with a few other officials and had spent about three hours there. It was puzzling how she managed to enter the heavily guarded building of the Madurai Government Medical College Hospital, where the EVMs for the Lok Sabha polls were stored, he said.
Venkatesan, a celebrated writer and Sahitya Akademi winner, had moved the Madras High Court on Friday seeking a detailed probe by the Election Commission of India (EC) on the entry of a woman tahsildar last week into the storage room, where records are kept
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