Pathanamthitta: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Kerala secretary and National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Pathanamthitta Lok Sabha constituency candidate K Surendran will be filing his nomination again following discrepancy in the number of cases filed against him in the nomination submitted earlier.
Details of 20 cases were given in the nomination. However, the state government has given an affidavit at the Kerala High Court citing 243 cases charged against him. The last date for submitting nominations is Friday.
There are also rumours that there are chances of Surendran’s nomination getting rejected.
The BJP, which had spearheaded the agitation over the LDF government's decision to implement the Supreme Court's verdict allowing women of all age groups to offer prayers at the hill shrine of Lord Ayyappa at Sabarimala late last year, is pinning hopes on Pathanamthitta constituency.
Surendran was at the forefront of the Sabarimala agitations and had been incarcerated for nearly a month over the protest.
Surendran was granted conditional bail by the Kerala High Court last December in a case related to alleged attack on a 52-year old woman pilgrim by frenzied Lord Ayyappa devotees at the Sabarimala Temple on November 6 when it was opened for special puja.
Several cases have been charged against Surendran at various police stations from Thiruvananthapuram to Karasagod. Surendran has also been charged in the incidents that happened when he was already in jail.
“The details of the majority of cases came out yesterday only,” Surendran said.
He added that the details of the cases known to him at the time of filing the nomination papers had been included. Legal sources point out that not including the details of cases about which the candidate had no information at the time of filing the nomination would not lead to rejection of the nomination.
Meanwhile, the BJP has organised a protest in front of the Mini Civil Station in Pathanamthitta accusing the state government of fabricating charges against Surendran.
