The Supreme Court on Thursday quashed proceedings pending in the Madras high court over pleas challenging the election of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) Member of Parliament (MP) Kanimozhi from Tamil Nadu’s Thoothukudi
“The election petition is dismissed. The appeal is allowed,” said a bench of justices Ajay Rastogi and Bela M Trivedi while quashing the proceedings.
A Sanathana Kumar, a voter, challenged Kanimozhi’s election from Thoothukudi in 2019, saying she failed to mention her husband’s Permanent Account Number (PAN) in her election affidavit.
Kanimozhi said her husband, a Non-Resident Indian living in Singapore, neither possessed a PAN card nor does he pay any income tax in India.
Kanimozhi defeated Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s Tamilisai Soundararajan, who has since become the Telangana governor. A Muthuramalingam, a local BJP leader, substituted Soundararajan as a party in the high court in her plea against Kanimozhi’s election after she become the governor.
The high court in 2019 rejected Kanimozhi’s plea for dismissal of the two election petitions challenging her election, saying the proceedings necessarily needed be taken to their logical end.