NEW DELHI: The Election Commission on Sunday formed two teams to look into allegation levelled by Congress that around 60 lakh bogus voters were registered in Madhya Pradesh.
The teams will probe the allegations and will submit the final report by June 7. “If a deliberate mistake is detected, the responsibility shall be fixed so as to initiate appropriate action. The teams will also find out how the alleged errors, if any, have crept into electoral rolls,” the EC said in its order. It has also asked its officials to assess the status of field verification related to demographically similar entries in the electoral rolls.
The move came after a Congress delegation submitted a memorandum to the poll panel along with instances of multiple entries of the same voter with different names in a given Assembly constituency as well as those of one voter listed in multiple assembly constituencies.
Senior Congress leader and MP state chief Kamal Nath said, “We’ve provided evidence to the Election Commission that there are approximately 60 lakh fake voters registered in the voting list. These names have been deliberately registered in the list. This is not administerial negligence, but administarial misuse,” said Kamal Nath.
Congress’ chief for campaign committee Jyotiraditya Scindia said big malpractices have been found in the registration of voters. He also alleged a BJP’s role into this.
“How is it possible that population increased by 24 per cent in 10 years but the number of voters increased by 40 per cent...We scrutinised list in all constituencies and we found one voter is registered in 26 lists.”
“Similar cases have been reported at other areas,” he added.
“Many voters have been listed in the same polling booth multiple times. There is a second category where the same voters are part of multiple polling booths. The third category is where we saw the same name getting repeated in different constituencies too,” he said.