Chennai, July 20 (PTI): DMDK President and leader of the opposition in the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly Vijayakant will have to face an Election Petition (EP) against him with the Madras High Court dismissing an application filed by him seeking to reject the petition. In his order on the application, Justice K Venkataraman said that considering the totality of the circumstances, he was of the view that Vijayakant "has not raised any valid ground to dismiss the EP at this stage." The actor turned politician was elected from Rishivanthiyam Assembly constituency in Villupuram district in the April 2011 state assembly polls. One Jayanthi had filed the EP to declare as invalid the Returning Officer's March 28 order last year rejecting her nomination papers and to consequently declare Vijayakant's election as illegal. Stating that Jayanthis first contention was that the DMDK leaders application had been made after a two month lapse and had not been filed within the time limit,Justice Venkataraman, citing various judgements, said the question of whether the rejection of Jayanthi's nomination by the RO was valid or not was a matter to be decided only at the time of trial. He pointed out that her entire allegation was against the RO for rejecting her nomination without affording her an opportunity to put forth her objection. Rejecting Vijayakant's contention that there was no cause of action to file the EP and it was liable to be rejected, the Judge said the cause of action was a bundle of facts which had to be culled out from the entire pleadings made in the EP. As long as the EP disclosed some cause of action and raised some question fit to be decided by the court, the petition could not be dismissed, he said. He also rejected another contention by Vijayakant that Jayanthi was not an elector in the Rishivanthiyam and said there was no bar for outside voters to contest in any assembly constituency as the only requirement was that there should be 10 proposers, who were voters in the constituency. PTI GR APR
