Bagan dalam independent candidate withdraws his appeal

PUTRAJAYA: An Independent candidate who lost his bid for the Bagan Dalam state seat in the 13th general election (GE13) has withdrawn his appeal to nullify the election of A. Tanasekharan as the constituency's assemblyman.
G. Asoghan applied to the Court of Appeal today to withdraw the case, through lawyer Nicholas Tan who stood in for the plaintiff's counsel V. Amereson.
Senior federal counsel Nik Mohd Noor Nik Kar did not object but proposed that the court set RM10,000 as costs, on the grounds that he had already prepared his submission for the appeal.
The three-member Court of Appeal panel chaired by Justice Datuk Lim Yee Lan struck out Asoghan's appeal and ordered him to pay RM5,000 in legal costs to the Election Commission.
In the GE13 last year, Tanasekharan won the Bagan Dalam seat for the DAP with a 5,161-vote majority over Barisan Nasional's M. Karuppanan, Independent candidate Lim Seang Teik and Asoghan.
Asoghan subsequently filed an election petition to challenge the election result but later applied to withdraw it; the Election Court struck out the petition on July 23, last year.
He then filed the civil suit naming Tanasekharan and the Election Commission as defendants, for a declaration that the former's nomination as candidate for the constituency was invalid.
The plaintiff also sought to nullify the election result in which Tanasekharan received 10,253 votes.
In his statement of claim, Asoghan, who was DAP Jalan Bagan Luar branch chairman before being sacked by the party in April last year, had claimed that Tanasekharan misrepresented himself as a DAP candidate.
The High Court on March 11, this year allowed the Election Commission's application to strike out Asoghan's civil suit. – Bernama