NEW DELHI: Days after the Election Commission announced the polling dates of five states, the Madhya Pradesh Congress urged the Supreme Court to ensure that the voters list was sanitised. Madhya Pradesh Congress chief Kamal Nath alleged that there were around 60 lakh fake entries in the state voters list published by the Election Commission in January. Nath was joined by his Rajasthan counterpart Sachin Pilot, who made a similar submission in the top court.
In June, a party delegation had approached the Commission over the issue. “Later, the EC admitted in the draft voter list that it had omitted 24 fake lakh entries. This proved our suspicion was right,” said Nath.
Later, the opposition party took the matter to the apex court after it did not find the Commission response satisfactory.
While Madhya Pradesh will vote on November 28, Rajasthan goes to polls on December 7.
The MPCC chief said the party had also urged the apex court to provide the sanitised voters list in a text format so that the list of 5 crore voters could be verified. The plea filed by Nath through advocate Varun Chopra said directions should be issued to publish the voters list in a “text format as per rules”, instead of the PDF formatThe Congress move came after the Commission on Thursday submitted to the Supreme Court that Nath’s petition regarding discrepancies in MP voter list was based on false evidence.
However, Nath’s counsel Kapil Sibal submitted to the apex court that the list was published on a personal website and the same had been given to the EC as well. After hearing the submission of Nath and Pilot, the top court reserved its verdict on the pleas alleging duplication of names in the voters’ lists of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan and seeking random verification of VVPAT machines in the polls.