The Supreme Court on Friday quashed two separate petitions filed by senior Congress leaders Kamal Nath and Sachin Pilot alleging duplication of voters on electoral rolls in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, PTI reported. While Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh are scheduled for November 28, Rajasthan will vote on December 7.
A bench of justices AK Sikri and Ashok Bhushan said, “We have dismissed these petitions.”
The petitions sought random verification of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail slips as well as the publication of voter lists in text format for elections in the two states, reported Bar & Bench. While Nath claimed that around 60 lakh names on the voter list in Madhya Pradesh were duplicate, Election Commission’s advocate Vikas Singh said the poll panel had already removed a large number of duplicate entries even before the Congress taking up the matter.
Nath claimed that the Election Commission did not have the required number of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail machines and that the same electronic voting machines were used in different places, reported LiveLaw. “There are serious allegations with regard to the transportations of EVMs and VVPATs from a different state,” said Nath. “The Election Commission is not using any state machinery nor the central machinery for the transportation of the EVMs.”
Nath alleged that private entities were being used to transport the EVMs.
However, the Supreme Court did not find any loopholes in the Election Commission’s existing mechanism and refused to intervene.
Along with Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, Assembly elections will also be held in Chhattisgarh, Mizoram and Telangana before December 15.
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