youva rajayam

PRP candidate’s nomination accepted PCC member complains against the PRP nominee Collector in his seven-page order overrules objections Kakinada: The nomination of Praja Rajyam Party candidate for Kakinada Parliamentary constituency Chalamalasetty Sunil Kumar has been accepted by District Collector and Returning Officer Gopalakrishna Dwivedi at the end of a day-long hearing on the objections raised by Pradesh Congress Committee member Pantham Venkateswara Rao, who unsuccessfully contended that the defendant is not an Indian citizen, hence he was liable for disqualification. However, Mr. Sunil has proved that the charges framed against him were false and fabricated by producing the required evidences (Indian passport and PAN and voter identity cards) and thus corroborated his claims to Indian citizenship. Mr. Sunil is accused of possessing different passports issued at London in January 2003 and another one issued at Hyderabad in June 2004, mentioning his nationality in annual returns filed by him as a director of a London-based firm (Euro Andhra) as Indian and making contradictory statements of his date of birth. The crux of the issue was that Mr. Sunil had no conclusive proof of his Indian citizenship which was the basic qualification to contest. Mr. Venkateswara Rao and party have also downloaded certain documents from a UK Government website ( www.companieshouse.gov.in) which showed that Mr. Sunil is a British citizen but they could not produce supporting documents (evidence gathered from the Internet ought to have documentary proof). Another allegation faced by Mr. Sunil was that he did not file income tax returns in India up to 2007-08 as he himself stated in the affidavit submitted along with the nomination forms, that he was not ordinary resident of India. The Collector told media persons he was in the first place not competent to decide on citizenship and that all other matters raised by the complainants (those relating to Mr. Sunil’s date of birth, income tax returns and insolvency issues in relation to the company in which he was a director) were to be settled by the courts of law or other legal forums. Whether the PAN and voter identity cards and passport produced by Mr. Sunil to prove his citizenship contained forged information or not, the Returning Officer was not competent to decide their validity. “In case of reasonable doubt as to the validity of nomination papers, the benefit of doubt must be given to the candidate and his nomination should be held to be valid,” the Collector stated in his seven-page order wherein he overruled the objections.