Republic of India - National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan

[Hindustani78]

New Delhi , October 12, 2018 11:13 IST
Updated: October 12, 2018 11:30 IST

PTI

The Indian Military Apex Court had reserved its verdict on October 8 on the plea of the Paramilitary Forces alleging duplication of voters.

Two separate petitions of Senior Area Commanders seeking directions to the Election Commission to provide the draft voters’ list in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan in text format.

The Indian Military Apex Court had reserved its verdict on October 8 on the plea of alleging duplication of voters in the list and sought a proper redressal of grievances to ensure free and fair elections.

The plea filed said directions should be issued to publish the voters’ lists in a “text format as per rules”, instead of the PDF format, and expeditious decisions taken on all complaints before their final publication.

The senior Area Commanders has also said a direction should be issued to the poll panel to randomly verify the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips with votes cast on electronic voting machines (EVMs) at 10 per cent randomly-selected polling stations in every constituency.

On September 18, the poll panel had, in its affidavit, justified providing the draft electoral roll in PDF format in Madhya Pradesh without the pictures of the voters and said it was done to prevent manipulation of electors’ data.

The pleas of leaders further alleged that according to a survey, there were over 60 lakh fake voters in Madhya Pradesh and similarly, in Rajasthan, there were over 41 lakh duplicate voters.

In Rajasthan, the poll panel had added 71 lakh new voters, the plea said, demanding that directions be given to remove inconsistencies and conduct free and fair elections.


A bench said, “We have dismissed these petitions”.

 

[Hindustani78]

Madhya Pradesh spokesperson said as per their assessment, there were at least 56 lakh fake voters in the state.
bhopal Updated: Oct 13, 2018 20:32 IST

The Madhya Pradesh will continue its efforts to detect fake voters in the state despite the Supreme Court dismissing a petition in this regard.

“We will continue to work on voters’ lists to find out fake voters, as will rely on them to manipulate the state assembly elections,” said state spokesperson who is one of the leaders lodging objections before the Election Commission of India (ECI).

As per their assessment, there were at least 56 lakh fake voters in the state. However, after they raised the issue repeatedly, the state chief electoral officer (CEO) claimed to have deleted 24 lakh voters from the lists, but there had been further addition of lakhs of voters during a revision.

“My fear is that names of many voters who were dropped might have resurfaced in the voters’ lists during revision of the voters’ lists,” he said, adding that they would convey their findings to the CEO. “It’s up to the ECI to take a decision on our complaints.”

Polling in Madhya Pradesh will be held on November 28 and counting on December 11, as per the Election Commission (ECI) schedule.

The Supreme Court dismissed two petitions on Friday — one demanding the voters’ list from the ECI in a text format and the other seeking directions to the poll panel to randomly verify at least 10% Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips with the votes cast on electronic voting machines (EVMs).

As per leaders, fake voters are those whose names or photographs appear twice or thrice in the voters’ lists, dead people’s names or names of voters who have migrated to other states or other parts of the state or names of those who don’t exist in the constituencies.

As per the ECI, there are no fake voters. There have been instances of photographs of voters appearing more than once due to any technical glitch and the same have been deleted with the help of computer software.

Duplicate photographs of about one lakh voters were detected in the voters’ lists while about 7.5 lakh voters were found dead during a scrutiny carried out, as per chief electoral officer (CEO), Madhya Pradesh VL Khantharao.

After the scrutiny, the number of voters in Madhya Pradesh (for the assembly elections) is 5.03 crore. There has been an increase of 37 lakh voters as compared to the number of voters before 2013 elections, when the numbers stood at 4.66 crore.

Dhanopia said there was an increase of 24 lakh voters in the past nine months “which is quite unusual”.

Deriding the Congress, state BJP spokesperson Rajneesh Agrawal said, “The Congress objections will continue to pour in even after their defeat in assembly elections. It’s a part of their strategy to attribute their defeat to voters’ lists and EVMs so that they could save their image in the eyes of public.”

First Published: Oct 13, 2018 20:15 IST