Politics triggers over publication of draft voters list

Lokmat News Network

Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar:

All political parties on Wednesday launched a sharp attack on the municipal corporation administration over the voter lists it released. The errors in the lists have left political leaders stunned.

In the morning, Uddhav Sena leaders Chandrakant Khaire and Ambadas Danve met municipal administrator G Sreekanth. They demanded that the mistakes be corrected immediately and that action be taken against the responsible officers and staff. In the afternoon, the BJP filed objections after finding that voters from several polling stations in 14 prabhags had been shown under different prabhags. In the evening, Congress city president Shaikh Yusuf also submitted a memorandum to the administrator, pointing out the major mix-ups in the voter lists.

The administrator assured the delegation led by Khaire and Danve that objections would be heard, and corrections would be made after inspecting the concerned locations. “If any mistake has been made deliberately, action will be taken against the guilty,” he said.

Voter lists should be prepared after site inspections, but these lists were prepared while sitting in the office, claimed Khaire demanding that revised voter lists be published again and alleged that 3,000 to 5,000 voters had been shifted from one prabhag to another for someone’s benefit. Danve also demanded strict action against those who prepared the faulty lists.

BJP files objections

Some prabhags have been shown with 45,000 to 50,000 voters. Ideally, a polling station should have only 1,300 to 1,500 voters. However, voters from two to three booths of one prabhag were included in another or even a third prabhag. Such discrepancies were found in a total of 14 prabhags, prompting the BJP to file objections with the election branch. BJP’s Sameer Rajurkar said that a party delegation would be meeting the administrator on Thursday.

Over a thousand objections

The municipal corporation’s election branch has been receiving hundreds of objections every day. Between Monday and Wednesday evening, more than 1,000 objections were filed, according to election sources. This number is expected to rise further over the next two days. All political parties are demanding an extension of the deadline for filing objections.