Madurai collector and district election officer U. Sagayam has not made any specific recommendation to the Election Commission on the issue of countermanding the election to the Madurai (west) Assembly constituency in his three-page report regarding the cash-for-vote allegations.
Highly-placed sources told this newpaper that he has only placed before the ECI the bare facts about the seizures effected till the polling day in the constituency, which included seizure of about `20 lakhs in cash from the DMK workers and recovery of a bunch of papers from another DMK cadre Ramalingam. The seized papers carried jottings, which suggested that `60 lakhs had been distributed to the wards. “The handwritten papers running to about 30 pages have a mention of certain wards and the names of a couple of DMK workers caught red-handed during the earlier cash distribution of a few thousand rupees. These names figuring in the seized papers could be co-related. But technically speaking, the papers do not mention that the cash was given to voters but to DMK party workers. There is no proof to directly link the cash disbursal to the voters,” an official said.
Even as Mr Sagayam in his report to CEO Praveen Kumar on Monday has also mentioned about the seizure of unaccounted cash of `20 lakhs, it has not been added to the expenditure of the party candidate since the origin of its flow is yet to be traced. “Mere seizure of a bunch of papers cannot stand before the court of law. Had they seized the cash also along with the papers, the ECI could have had a strong case. Now, a detailed investigation of the persons concerned alone could bring out the truth,” an official said.