Congress' Complaint of Bogus Voter List in MP Based on 'Fictitious Figures', Says BJP

Bhopal: With Election Commission not finding any substance in Congress’s allegations of 60 lakh bogus voters in Madhya Pradesh, the BJP hit out at the grand old party for approaching the Commission with “erroneous and fictitious” figures.

“Congress lacks down to earth leaders so they are not aware about ground realities,” BJP spokesperson Rajnish Agrawal told News18. He claimed that the principal opposition party relied on hired software experts and made the complaint based upon information provided by them.

The Congress at times questions EVMs and on occasions raises question marks on ECI itself and by doing so they are just preparing the ground for their upcoming loss in MP, Agrawal claimed.

According to him, the final publication of electoral rolls was yet to take place and before doing so, the commission invites claims and objection but even before that Congress went to ECI with “erroneous” figures.

Congress chief spokesperson Manak Agrawal trashed ECI probe committee findings saying it just roamed around in four constituencies and met SDMs and Tehsildars for preparing their report.

“The report has been prepared under pressure from the PM and Chief Minister,” Agrawal alleged saying the party would continue to raise this issue in future.

On the BJP’s charge that the complaint was based on wrong figures, the Congress leader affirmed “our information was absolutely correct”.

The two teams constituted to probe the Congress’s allegations submitted its report to the poll panel on Friday and said that there were no fake voters. It admitted that there were cases of double entries because voter lists were not updated after deaths, or after voters relocated to other areas.

However, even most of these double entries have been removed, the report said. The probe panel said that the number of double entries was 68 lakh in 2015-16 and this has come down to 7 lakh this year.

Meanwhile, all the District Election Officers in the state have been directed to verify electoral rolls in their respective jurisdictions.

A delegation of Congress leaders, led by Kamal Nath and Jyotiraditya Scindia, had recently met the EC to raise the bogus voter list issue.