KASARGOD: The BJP has taken strong exception to several names in the final list of voters published by the Election Commission in the lead-up to the 2016 Assembly poll in Manjeshwaram.
“We found the names of people who had relocated to other parts as well as the deceased in the list,” said K Shreekanth, BJP Kasargod district chief.
Following the complaint lodged by the party, the booth-level officers (BLO) put together a list of voters, who shifted elsewhere or had passed away. According to Shreekanth, it was after polling on May 16, 2016 the matter came to the notice of the BJP brass.
“It is a clear case of voter impersonation and we submitted before the High Court a list of persons who could not have possibly cast their votes in the election,” Shreekanth said.
A majority of them hailed from the Muslim League(IUML) bastions, Mangalpady, Manjeshwaram, Kumbla and Paivalige panchayats.
BJP’s Surendran had lost to sitting MLA P B Abdul Razak of the IUML by a mere 89 votes. Prior to this, it was in 1991 the BJP came within a whisker of tasting success at the hustings in Manjeshwaram when saffron stalwart K G Marar lost to IUML’s Cherkalam Abdullah.
Cherkalam had won by a wafer-thin majority of 1,072 votes. Since then, the BJP has always been the number two party in Manjeshwaram. Razak, however, saw the narrow victory margin as a lucky talisman and made the number ‘memorable’ by securing ‘89’ as the registration number for his new Innova car.