Congress lodges bogus voters complaint before CEC

The Chhattisgarh Pradesh Congress Committee (CGPCC) on Friday lodged a complaint before Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) O P Rawat about disparities in the electoral rolls of the state and inclusion of ‘bogus’ voters in it.

Talking to media after holding talks with the CEC, Cong state president Bhupesh Baghel, citing the report of Indore-based NGO, The Politics.in, alleged that it was due to the ‘bogus’ voters that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the 2013 Assembly elections.

Vikas Jamoria, Gaurav Chauhan and Ankita Jain of the NGO gave a detailed presentation about their claims during the media briefing.

They pointed out that in between 2003-04 and 2008-09 Assembly elections as well as General Elections, a total of 2 lakh new voters were registered. Whereas during the Assembly polls and General Elections of 2013-14, the number of electors in the state surprisingly quadrupled to 8 lakhs, they said.

As per the NRGN (duplicate) category of the Election Commission, there are 2,12,424 voters. This category includes names of same voters who are shown in two or more list in a single assembly segment.

Quoting the difference of vote share between the Congress and the BJP in the 2013 Assembly polls in the state was merely 0.75%, they said, there were 19 Assembly seats where the winning margin was less than 5,000 votes. The NGO claimed that ‘bogus’ voters had played a vital role in the government formation.

There were 10 Assembly segments in the state, Takhatpur, Baikunthpur, Raipur Rural, Dharsiwa, Rajim, Kawardha, Mungeli, Konta, Dantewada and Bijapur, where winning margin was lesser than the NRGN voters whose name, relative name and gender were same in that particular Assembly constituency, Vikas said. He further added that seven out of the ten seats were won by the BJP.

Baghel further charged that the BJP was manipulating some of the district collectors to retain the power by any means.