Poll officials file complaint over bid to shift 40 voters out of Pune's Bhosari constituency

Pune, Nov 15 (PTI) Election authorities have filed a police complaint alleging that 40 applications, submitted using four mobile numbers in October 2024, sought to shift voters out of the Bhosari assembly constituency in Pune district, officials said.

Jayraj Deshmukh, additional tehsildar of Pimpri-Chinchwad and assistant electoral registration officer of the constituency, submitted the complaint to the Nigdi police station on November 1 under Section 31 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950.

Authorities on Saturday said they have now restored the voters to the Bhosari constituency electoral roll and police have registered a non-cognisable offence based on the complaint.

The matter stems from a complaint submitted by NCP (SP) leader Ajit Gavhane to the Maharashtra Chief Electoral Officer in November 2025, alleging that voters registered in the Bhosari constituency had been shifted to other constituencies without their knowledge or consent.

According to the latest complaint, 40 applications seeking changes in voters’ residential addresses through Form 8 were submitted online on October 5, 2024, using four mobile numbers. Of these, 10 were submitted using one number, 26 using another, three through a third and one with the help of the fourth.

Form 8 is an Election Commission of India (ECI) application form used by existing registered voters to update or modify their electoral roll details.

During preliminary scrutiny, the election authorities found that the applications had been submitted by third parties using the four mobile numbers, the complaint stated.

Following directions from the Pune District Election Officer on October 31, 2026, the assistant electoral registration officer was authorised to initiate legal action for the alleged malpractice.

As per the complaint, submitting such applications through third parties amounted to an offence punishable under Section 31 of the Representation of the People Act.

Gavhane, who lost to BJP’s Mahesh Landage from the Bhosari seat in the 2024 Maharashtra assembly polls, said that the alleged shifting of voters’ names took place before and after the elections.

“The alleged instances came to light on the polling day when some people, who had been living in the constituency and voting for several years, reached the polling booth only to find their names shifted to other constituencies. When we probed it after the elections, we learnt that around 15,000 voters’ names had been fraudulently deleted or shifted to other constituencies,” he claimed.

The NCP (SP) leader said they had cited 68 such cases in Bhosari constituency. “All these people, who had been voting in the Bhosari constituency for several years, had not filed any form to shift their names to other constituencies,” he said.

He claimed that the majority of such individuals were Muslims.

After gathering “proof and evidence”, Gavhane said they had complained to the State Election Commission.

“We have now learnt that a non-cognisable offence has been registered based on the complaint we had filed in November 2025,” he said.

Gavhane said that in one of the cases, a voter's name was shifted to Pimpri constituency from Bhosari. "The fact is that the voter was already dead," he said.

His associate Sarang Kamtekar said a non-cognisable offence is just an eyewash. “There should be a proper FIR in the case. We had given the list of voters with evidence. Based on the evidence, the authorities should broaden the scope of the probe as a large number of voters were shifted from the constituency,” he said.

Pune District Collector Jitendra Dudi told PTI that a non-cognisable offence has been registered against unidentified persons who used mobile numbers to shift voters’ names.

“We have restored all these names to the electoral roll of the Bhosari constituency,” he said.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)