The EC immediately forwarded the list of 485 new MPs to the Secretariat of the House of Representatives and informed the Cabinet Secretariat, Senate Secretariat and the Office of His Majesty's Principal Private Secretary that the election holding had been done, said EC Office secretary-general Ekkachai Warunprapha.

Initially, the EC planned to endorse 499 MPs following a third round of voting in 14 constituencies on Saturday and informed the government to seek a royal decree to convene the new House.

But the Administrative Court on Friday issued an injunction against the third round of voting pending a judicial review that the EC had breached the laws regarding the organising of the election. The Constitution Court, meanwhile, is scheduled to review a complaint that EC had allegedly violated the charter by holding the election less than 45 days after the House dissolution and that ballot booth configuration was unconstitutional.

The four EC commissioners  held an urgent meeting to consider the party-list MPs and four other constituency MPs before resolving to endorse them and close the election process.

After the meeting, Ekkachai told the press conference that the Thai Rak Thai's party list was one short of 100 because Premsak Piayura, who was initially on the 93rd order on the list had quit the party and lost candidacy status.

The four constituency-based MPs endorsed  were all Thai Rak Thai candidates. They are Ruangdej Suphanfai (Khon Kaen's Constituency 11), Anusorn Nakhasi (Chai Nat's Constituency 1), Somboon Praiwal (Mae Hong Son's Constituency 2) and Songkram Kijlertpairoj (Samut Prakan's Constituency 1).

Ekkachai said the EC had received a total of 26 complaints against some of the MPs and had finished considering 16 complaints.

Ekkachai said the EC would wait for the decisions of the Administrative and Constitution courts whether the election would be annulled or not before deciding whether to disqualify certain election winners.

He said if the courts nullified the election, it would be up to other courts concerned whether to punish certain voters who had torn up ballot papers in protest or not.

But EC commissioner Parinya Nakchattree said if the courts nullified the election, all cases of election law violations would be automatically lapse.

Before attending the meeting, the four EC commissioners tried their best to avoid an army of reporters who came to wait for them in front of the EC head office on the 19th floor of the Sri Chullasup Building. The commissioners arrived for the meeting at 10:30 am.

While entering the meeting room, EC commissioner Jaruphat Ruangsuwan denied that he had planned to resign. "No. No," Jaruphat replied when reporters told him that they heard rumours that he would quit.

Since the men's rooms are outside the compound of the office, Parinya decided to use the ladies' rooms inside the compound before attending the meeting after he saw many reporters waited in front of the men's rooms.

When reporters tried to ask him to comment on the criticism against the EC, he replied: "I don't understand why EC came under much criticism. Didn't you want an election to be held?"

But when reporters argued that the people want the EC to be replaced by a new one, Parinya replied that it was impossible as there was no Parliament now. He said the EC had to organise the election in accordance with the law.

The Nation