The Election Commission on Wednesday dismissed as “false and misleading” Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s allegations of discrepancies in the electoral roll of an Assembly constituency in Karnataka.
In a social media post on Wednesday, the poll body said that any correction, deletion or inclusion in the electoral roll can only be made as per the procedure laid down in law, and that no one can “force” the removal of a person’s name without following due process.
“If any such person actually believes in any of his analysis and allegations of wrongful inclusion of any names, there should be no problem for him in sharing such evidence with the ERO [electoral registration officer] along with the signed declaration and oath [under the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960],” it said.
On August 7, Gandhi said that his party had spent six months examining the electoral rolls in Mahadevapura Assembly segment of the Bengaluru Central Lok Sabha constituency and found discrepancies in more than one lakh names.
He alleged that this was evidence of the Election Commission having colluded with the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Gandhi claimed that the electoral rolls included 11,965 duplicate entries, 40,009 voters with fake or invalid addresses, 10,454 “bulk voters” registered in a single address, 4,132 voters with invalid photographs and 33,692 voters in whose cases there had allegedly been misuse of Form 6.
The Election Commission’s Form 6 is an application document for registering new voters.
The poll panel said on Wednesday that if someone who is not an elector in a constituency alleges wrongful inclusion of a person’s name, they can only do so by filing an application before the electoral registration officer, who will administer an oath under the rules.
Commenting on the Election Commission’s demand, Gandhi said on August 8 that he had taken oath as a member of Parliament, and asked why the poll panel wanted him to make his allegations of “vote theft” on oath.
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