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The deposit must be made as a pre-condition for filing nomination papers for the byelection, the petitioner said. Chennai: While an elected MLA has an absolute right to resign, the rights of the voter cannot be violated, observed Madras high court , adding that elected MLAs resigning and then contesting immediately on another party’s symbol is a problem. The bench directed ECI to come up with steps to protect the constitutional rights of a voter who elected the MLAs, and asked it to explain whether there are guidelines to deal with the peculiar situation of an MLA resigning the post soon after being elected and seeking re-election in the bypolls which is necessitated by the very resignation. The court, refusing to pass an interim order stalling the byelection, observed that courts cannot interfere in the election process once it is set in motion. He suggested introduction of ‘election expenditure security’ to recover the cost of the resultant byelections and to examine and initiate necessary legislative measures to introduce a statutory disqualification or a reasonable cooling-off period to prevent elected representatives who voluntarily and prematurely resign from contesting subsequent elections for a prescribed period. As to the notified byelection to the two constituencies, the petitioner wanted the court to direct ECI to mandate payment of ‘election expenditure security’ by Maragatham Kumaravel and P Sathyabama who resigned from Maduranthakam and Dharapuram constituencies immediately after election.
A division bench of justices S M Subramaniam and K Govindarajan made the observations on Wednesday, when a public interest writ petition moved by advocate K Suthan seeking to restrain Election Commission of India (ECI) from holding byelections to fill the vacancies in Madurantakam and Dharapuram assembly constituencies, came up for hearing.