The Election Commission on Tuesday banned Shamli District Magistrate Inder Vikram Singh from poll-related duty for a year for lapses during his stint as returning officer in the Kairana Lok Sabha bye-poll in May, reports said. Soon after the poll panel’s announcement, the local administration announced that bureaucrat Akhilesh Singh will replace Inder Vikram Singh.

Chief Electoral Officer Lakku Venkateshwarlu said there was an error in the tabulation of votes but the mistake did not change the election results, Aaj Tak reported.

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Several complaints of faulty voter-verified paper audit trail or VVPAT machine were reported during the bye-election in the politically sensitive Uttar Pradesh constituency. Tabassum Hasan of the Rashtriya Lok Dal, who had the support of a united Opposition front –including the Congress, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party – defeated the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Mriganka Singh by nearly 45,000 votes.

The Samajwadi Party and the Rashtriya Lok Dal had lodged several complaints against the returning officer after the election. In a letter to the returning officer, Dhananjay Shukla, the special secretary at the state department of appointments and personnel said: “The state government has decided to relieve you of your duties and has put you on the waiting list.”

Inder Vikram Singh, whose next posting is yet to be announced, purportedly withheld the election result for eight hours, The Times of India reported. Hasan told the daily that he was not reachable throughout the polling day. “Even during the counting, Singh sent fudged figures of different rounds, which was a clear indication that he wanted the BJP to win,” Hasan alleged.

The parliamentarian claimed that Inder Vikram Singh had ordered re-polling in only some of the more than 100 polling booths where alleged irregularities occurred.