Defending its move to undertake extensive checking of vehicles to unearth alleged cases of transferring large amount of cash to be distributed among voters ahead of the Assembly polls,the Election Commission informed the Madras High Court on Tuesday that it had received tip-offs from Central officials that even police vehicles were being used for this purpose. The First Bench of the High Court,comprising Chief Justice M Y Eqbal and Justice T S Sivagnanam,was hearing a batch of public interest litigations for and against the stringent checking that the officials have been undertaking in the past few days. Senior counsel representing the Election Commission G Rajagopalan informed the court that the EC had received very shocking information collected by Central government officials on poll duty that the money was being transferred even in police vehicles to escape detection. The EC would take action against the officials involved in transferring money,he added. The counsel then handed over a file to the court that had more information about the cases. This,Rajagopalan added,was only one-tenth of the information that the poll panel had received till Sunday. So far,2,900 cases have been registered in connection with vehicle checking and 48,000 cases of violation of code in the state.
