BHOPAL: Eight days before the assembly by-elections to Mungaoli and Kolaras seats in Madhya Pradesh, the opposition Congress has alleged major irregularities in the updated voter lists, which will be used for the twin by-polls on February 24.
State Congress president and former MP Arun Yadav alleged on Friday that Congress workers have detected widespread irregularities in the voter list of both seats which was updated and uploaded online by the Election Commission on January 25.
“We’ve made around a dozen complaints with the Election Commission, both in Delhi and in MP, but it seems the EC will hold the by-polls on the basis of the same list, which is replete with anomalies. It seems the EC is working under pressure of the ruling BJP by not correcting the list, despite concrete evidences of anomalies having been put forward by the Congress leaders before it,” said Yadav.
Yadav alleged that dedicated team of booth level Congress workers in both the seats have detected the anomalies from updated voter lists uploaded by the EC online.
“There are large number instances in the list of both constituencies, where a single voter is listed multiple times at several booths of the same constituency. Also, we’ve detected that pictures of single woman have been used in the lists against the name of multiple voters. Further, it has also been detected by our booth level workers that children aged between 10 and 15 years have their names in the voter lists,” alleged Yadav.
The state Congress chief shared samples of the anomalies with the journalists in Bhopal on Friday. “One woman Priyanka, who is the wife of Jeevan Lal is listed multiple times in the list of Booth No. 248 of Mungaoli seat. Similar is the case of Pooja in Booth No. 93, Ashish in Booth No 248 and Sapna Bai in Booth No 218.”
“If the anomalies detected by our workers are taken into account, then around 17,000 voters in Mungaoli and 8,000 voters in Kolaras could be duplicate or bogus voters,” claimed Yadav.
According to the data pertaining to both seats available on the chief electoral officer MP portal, the Mungaoli seat of Ashok Nagar district houses 2.44 lakh-plus voters, while Kolaras seat of Shivpuri district houses 1.91 lakh plus voters.
Both the seats going to by-polls on February 24 form part of Guna Lok Sabha seat, which is being represented since last four times by former union minister and young Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia.
The by-elections to both the assembly seats have been necessitated by the demise of sitting Congress legislators Mahendra Singh Kalukheda (Mungaoli) and Ram Singh Yadav (Kolaras).
The main contest in Mungaoli is between Congress candidate Brajendra Singh Yadav and ruling BJP nominee Bhai Sahab Yadav, while in Kolaras the battle is between Congress candidate Mahendra Yadav and former MLA and BJP candidate Devendra Jain.