Congress Claims 27 Lakh Fake Voters Still Exist In Electoral Rolls Of MP

Even after deleting the names of 24 lakh fake voters from the electoral rolls of Madhya Pradesh, the opposition Congress has made a fresh allegation on Thursday, claiming 27 lakh fake voters still exist in 77 assembly constituencies. The state goes to poll in November this year.

The state unit of Congress party in a memorandum submitted on Thursday, to the Madhya Pradesh Chief Election Officer, V.L. Kanth Rao, claimed that they have conducted a scrutiny of 77 assembly constituencies from the scanned copy of the voters’ lists provided by the Election Commission on July 31, 2018, and found that 27,15,119 voters were fake or duplicate.

The scrutiny was conducted by a poll-related start up — thepolitics.in. The agency  run by former IITian, Vikas Jain, claimed that they did a similar scrutiny of the electoral rolls of Rajasthan and found 42 lakh fake or duplicate voters and had complained the same to the Election Commission of India through an affidavit in August.

The chairperson of the state Congress, J.P. Dhanopia, said, “We have been repeatedly asking the Election authorities to weed out the fake voters from last few months. We have pointed out several discrepancies in the data of the election commission but our complaints are not being taken seriously”.

Ajay Gupta, chief of the legal cell of Madhya Pradesh Congress said, “We have submitted a memorandum to the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) along with the fake or duplicate names in a CD”.

Earlier in June, a delegation of Madhya Pradesh Congress leaders comprising the state chief Kamal Nath, MP from Guna constituency; the in charge of the Congress election campaign committee, Jyotiadiyarao Scindia; and senior party leader Vivek Tankha met with the chief election commissioner, O.P. Rawat and claimed that the voters’ list of the state needs to be corrected before the assembly election as there are 60 lakh fake voters in the lists. The Commission had turned down the complaint of Congress after an initial inquiry saying that it has no merit, though, it later removed 24 lakh voters and added 11 lakh new voters to the list.

During the meeting with the poll panel, the Congress state chief Kamal Nath had alleged that the voters’ lists were tampered with at the behest of the Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led BJP government. 

The Congress had even submitted a list of the names, saying that it had found that people with the same name and same photos were enlisted in different constituencies after conducting a survey in around 100 constituencies. 
 
Clarifying the issue, the Chief Election Officer of Madhya Pradesh, V.L. Kanth Rao said, “Before every election, the election commission updates the voters’ lists and during this process, we have removed 24 lakh voters who have either migrated or died and added 11 lakh new voters. The process of updating the voters’ list is on and the final list will be published on September 27. We are leaving no stone unturned to fix the electoral rolls.”

Commenting on the Congress’ complaint of 60 lakh fake voters, Rao said, “The probe committee which was constituted by the EC on Congress’ complaint debunked the Congress’ claim. Even though there were no fake voters, there were cases of double entries because voters’ lists were not updated after deaths, or after voters relocated to other areas.”
 
Congress- State Election Commission turn against each other

Meanwhile, Congress and the State Election Commission is ready for a head-on, on the publication of voters’ lists in word or PDF format. On July 31, the state election commission released the updated voters’ lists in PDF format citing its new circular. While Congress was demanding to publish the voters’ list in word format because it is easy to identify the duplicate or fake voters.

Speaking on the issue, founder of thepolitics.in which has conducted the scrutiny of voters’ lists of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, Vikas Jain alleged an apathetic attitude on part of the state election officials.

He said “Despite our repeated requests we were denied text copies of electoral rolls of 230 constituencies. The officials give us scanned copies which are difficult to be analysed or scrutinised.” He added, “Election Commission offices in Rajasthan and other states have no problem giving electoral rolls in text format which are a public property in public domain but the Madhya Pradesh office is surprisingly denying this”.

Moving a step further, Kamal Nath has knocked the Supreme Court’s door on this matter. In the plea, Nath demanded the electoral roll in the word format from the election commission. 

Hearing on the issue, the Supreme Court on Friday gave time till September 10 to the Election Commission to explain its stand on the Congress leader’s demand for a copy of the electoral roll for MP in word format.

However, the counsel appearing for the commission defended the position in providing the electoral roll in word format, saying the word copy was not provided as it can be edited easily.

Meanwhile, the final publication of electoral rolls in the state is scheduled on September 27. As per the latest list, there are 4.94 crore voters in the state. The residents of the state can submit their objections about the voters’ list till August 31. Elections to the 230-member Madhya Pradesh Assembly are scheduled to be held in November this year.