Odisha High Court serves notices to 3 MLAs on election rigging case

The Odisha High Court today served notices on three MLAs directing them to file counter affidavits  on a case where three candidates have filed writ petition on irregularities in counting votes. The three MLAs who had won the assembly elections are Subala Sahu of Congress from Bijepur constituency, Congress leader Naba Das from Jharsuguda constituency and Anam Nayak of the BJD from Bhawanipatna constituency.

The politicians who have lost out to them and thus filed the case are two BJD leaders, former minister Prasanna Kumar Acharya and Kishore Mohanty, and Congress leader Dusmanta Nayak. 

The allegation is that the candidates had lost out for a small margin and and they have urged to recount the votes. The court has asked the winning MLAs to reply within three weeks. 

There seems to be more election irregularity allegations coming in from the state. Defeated BJD candidate Kusum Tete hailing from Sundargarh has alleged that the winning candidate Congress MLA Jogesh Kumar Singh does not belong to the scheduled cats category. She filed an petition which says that SIngh is the legal successor of Renu Pratap SIngh who does not belong to ST category but to "Kshatriya or Khandayat Bhuyan" category. The information was recieved by filing an RTI. Since Singh contested from a seat reserved for ST category, and he himself does not belong to it, his candidature must be cancelled, appealed Tete.