The Supreme Court on Thursday asked the Election Commission to submit its response to petitions alleging duplication of voters in electoral rolls in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, reported PTI. A bench of Justices AK Sikri and Ashok Bhushan also issued a notice to the election commissions of the two states.
The petition was filed by Congress leaders Kamal Nath and Sachin Pilot. Appearing for them, senior advocate AM Singhvi told the bench that Nath used his own money to conduct a survey in Madhya Pradesh and found there were over 60 lakh duplicate voters in the voters’ list. In June, the Congress had submitted a complaint to the EC, alleging irregularities in voter lists in the state.
Nath, the state’s Congress chief, said that the party had even provided evidence to the Election Commission. “These names have been deliberately registered in the list,” he said. “This is not administrative negligence, but administrative misuse.”
Earlier this month, the party alleged that there were 42 lakh duplicate entries in Rajasthan’s voter list. The Congress submitted a memorandum to the Election Commission and sought an inquiry, highlighting alleged irregularities in the document ahead of elections in the state.
Nath has also sought random verification of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail machines in the upcoming Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh. The VVPAT system allows the voting machine to dispense a slip to voters so that they can verify if their vote has been cast correctly. Nath has asked the court to direct the EC to randomly verify VVPAT slips with votes cast using the machines at 10% of the polling stations in every constituency. He also demanded that voter lists be provided in the text format.
The matter will be heard next on August 31.
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