In a shocking revelation, the Election Commission has found over 7 lakh fake voters in the electoral rolls of 230 Assembly constituencies of Madhya Pradesh where polls are scheduled to be held by the year-end. The fake voters were discovered after the Election Commission ordered summary revisions of voters lists.
Out of the total 5 crore 78 lakh voters registered in 51 districts of Madhya Pradesh, the huge number of fake voters was discovered by a special IT team sent by the Election Commission. Out of these 7 lakh fake voters, 3 lakh entries were found to be of those who were already dead. In addition to this, four lakh voters were anonymous individuals whose whereabouts were not known.
“We have discovered thousands of people with their entry at two places. Through rigorous monitoring with the help of a specially designed software of Election Commission, we have marked such fake voters. We are in the process of deleting such fake voters who could have rigged the polls,’’ said an officer posted in Chief Electoral Office of Madhya Pradesh.
The maximum number of such fake entries were found in Sagar district, where 60,424 irregularities were discovered in the electoral rolls of eight Assembly segments. Gwalior had 41,851 fake voters, followed by Bhopal with 35,248, Indore (31,043), Katni (28,556), Bhind (23,756), Ujjain (22,472) and Jabalpur (19,790). Interestingly, most of these districts have a majority of BJP MLAs.
Leader of opposition Ajay Singh said, “We have been saying this for the last so many years that polls are rigged in Madhya Pradesh. With this alarming figure, it is certain that polls cannot be conducted in a free and fair manner unless the fake voters are removed.” The Congress leader said, “BJP has systematically eroded the democratic institutions through these unfair means. The way they have won previous elections during their 15-year rule shows that they do not believe in a level-playing field. They believe in cheating.” The government of Shivraj Singh Chouhan is fighting for its fourth term in office; the BJP came to power in Madhya Pradesh in 2003.
Ajay Singh demanded the immediate deletion of such fake voters and an exhaustive search of voters lists to remove such fake voters who could change the result of Assembly elections. The Congress has ramped up its preparations for the coming Assembly elections as it has been enthused by wins in several bypolls in the past two years over the BJP.
Meanwhile, after a complaint from social activist Ajay Dubey, Managing Director of Madhya Pradesh State Electronics Development Corporation (MPSEDC) and secretary of Chief Minister, Chandrashekhar Borkar was removed from his post.
Borkar, an IAS officer, was removed by the chief secretary from the post of MD of MPSEDC. Madhya Pradesh Electronics Development Corporation had the responsibility of certain works of the Election Commission in Madhya Pradesh. The corporation is preparing the voters list for the entire state. It has software that is used to prepare the voters list. MPSEDC further gets the work done through a private vendor. After the district-level election returning officers (EROs) get the voters list sanitised, it is sent back to MPSEDC for compilation.
Chief Election Commissioner Om Prakash Rawat was in Bhopal on Monday to meet the representatives of political parties in view of forthcoming polls in state. He is also likely to review the issue of fake voters lists. The Congress had previously lodged a complaint with the Election Commission regarding huge numbers of fake voters in the state.