Kairana: EC acts against UP bureaucrat for lapses

The Election Commission has acted against Inder Vikram Singh, District Magistrate of Shamli in Uttar Pradesh, for the lapses he committed while acting as Returning Officer during the by-poll in the State’s Kairana parliamentary constituency in May this year.

The EC ordered that Inder Vikram Singh should not be engaged in any election-related works for a year. The commission also warned him for his lapses when he was the Returning Officer for the bye-election to the Kairana Lok Sabha seat.

Tabassum Hasan of the Rashtriya Lok Dal had defeated the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Mriganka Singh in the fiercely contested bye-election by a margin of about 44000 votes. The results, however, had not been declared for hours. Singh had overseen the bye-election as the Returning Officer.

Hasan, who had also been supported by the Congress, Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party, had been declared winner only after a recounting of votes.

Several Electronic Voting Machines and Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail devices had also malfunctioned during the polling for the bye-election in Kairana.

Soon after the EC’s order against Singh, the Uttar Pradesh Government also removed him from the office of the District Magistrate of Shamli.