Madhya Pradesh: The Election Commission has initiated disciplinary action against three poll officers for lapses in preparing voters list for Mungaoli and Kolaras bypolls, The Indian Express report said. The EC has issued show cause notices to them demanding an explanation for the lapses.
A senior EC official told IE, “In Kolaras, roughly 28,000 entries were alleged to be incorrect and 18,000 for Mungaoli. Out of these 1,500 cases in Mugaoli and roughly 12,000 cases in Kolaras were, indeed, found to be names of dead, shifted and duplicate voters.”
The state government will decide the nature of punishment after the explanation is submitted by the poll officer or Electoral Registration Officers (ERO), said the report.
The ERO is responsible for preparing the electoral roll for Assembly seats. They comprise of the area’s sub-divisional magistrate or additional district magistrate.
Mungaoli and Kolaras polls were conducted on February 24. The Congress party had alleged irregularities in voters list eight days before the elections, after which EC has deleted names of 10 lakh dead voters from the state’s electoral list.
On Sunday, the Congress party made fresh allegations that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in MP has included names of “60 lakh fake voters”. EC then sent four teams to conduct a search in Narela, Bhojpur, Hoshangabad, and Seoni-Malwa. They will report back with their findings. EC will then constitute teams of poll officers who will correct the list. The draft of the new list will be out by June 21. The state goes to polls later this year.