Congress on Sunday alleged irregularities in electoral rolls in Madhya Pradesh. The party claimed that around 60 lakh voters registered in the voting list of the state are fake which goes to polls later this year.
A delegation of Congress leaders comprising Madhya Pradesh unit president Kamal Nath, senior leaders Deepak Babaria, Digvijaya Singh, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Suresh Pachouri and Vivek Tankha submitted a memorandum to the Election Commission to weed out fake voters from the electoral rolls.
“We have provided evidence to the Election Commission that there are approximately 60 lakh fake voters registered in the electoral rolls. These names have been deliberately registered in the list. This is not administrative negligence, but administrative misuse,” Nath told reporters here.
Scindia, the chairman of the Congress Campaign Committee for Madhya Pradesh, said the party scrutinized the electoral rolls to find one voter registered in electoral rolls of at least 26 different polling booths.
He said Congress leaders examined the voters' list of 101 Assembly constituencies and found 27 lakh fake voters. “The number of duplicate voters works out to 60 lakh for all the Assembly constituencies,” he said.
Furthermore, Scindia said the population of the state grew by 24% over the last 10 years, while the number of voters increased by 40%. He said in percentage terms, fake voters amount to 12% of the total five crore voters registered in the state. Scindia said the difference in vote share between the Congress and the BJP was just 9% during the 2013 legislative assembly election.
Congress has asked the EC to inquire into the irregularities and discrepancies and take strict and prompt action against the erring officials. Nath said the Congress has also sought the removal of all duplicate entries in the electoral rolls of 230 Assembly constituencies of Madhya Pradesh and to conduct free and fair elections.
Congress had flagged the issue of duplicate voters in the bypolls for Mungaoli and Kolaras assembly seats held in February.