The Election Commission has acted against Inder Vikram Singh, District Magistrate of Shamli in Uttar Pradesh, for the lapses he committed while acting as Returning Officer during the by-poll in the State’s Kairana parliamentary constituency in May this year.
The EC ordered that Inder Vikram Singh should not be engaged in any election-related works for a year. The commission also warned him for his lapses when he was the Returning Officer for the bye-election to the Kairana Lok Sabha seat.
Tabassum Hasan of the Rashtriya Lok Dal had defeated the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Mriganka Singh in the fiercely contested bye-election by a margin of about 44000 votes. The results, however, had not been declared for hours. Singh had overseen the bye-election as the Returning Officer.
Hasan, who had also been supported by the Congress, Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party, had been declared winner only after a recounting of votes.
Several Electronic Voting Machines and Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail devices had also malfunctioned during the polling for the bye-election in Kairana.
Soon after the EC’s order against Singh, the Uttar Pradesh Government also removed him from the office of the District Magistrate of Shamli.