Assembly polls: Kerala opposition parties raise suspicion over postal voting

Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala and BJP state president K Surendran approached the Election Commission seeking transparency of postal votes

Opposition parties in Kerala, both Congress and BJP, have raised suspicions over the postal voting.

Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala and BJP state president K Surendran approached the Election Commission seeking transparency and scrutiny of the postal votes to check double voting.

The allegations surfaced after a couple of persons who already cast votes received proforma for postal voting as well. This time persons aged above 80 and Covid-19 patients were also given the option of postal voting. But these votes were not securely kept. There were also allegations that officials having lenience towards the left-front were deployed for collecting postal votes.

Chennithala alleged that widespread malpractice in the postal votes for around 3.5 lakh service voters in the state was suspected as many were reportedly getting option for postal voting even after they cast their votes.

Both Chennithala and Surendran demanded the Election commission to make public the number of postal votes.

The opposition had earlier alleged massive duplicate entries in the electoral rolls. While Election Commission found that there were 38,000 duplicate entries, Chennithala alleged that 4.3 lakh duplicate entries were there.