Ahead of the February 24 Assembly by-polls in Kolaras and Mungaoli, the Madhya Pradesh Congress today alleged that names of thousands of voters appear multiple times in voter lists, and the Election Commission is not acting on a complaint in this regard.
"There are irregularities regarding 12,000-13,000 voters' names in Mungaoli and 8,000-9,000 names in Kolaras. Several voters' names are mentioned at three-four places with different numbers and they have got a different voter identity card for each entry," state Congress chief Arun Yadav alleged.
"In some places different voter ID cards have the same photograph," Yadav said at a press conference here while distributing copies of the voter lists in question.
"We complained to the Election Commission three days ago, but it has not taken any action on the matter so far," Congress spokesman Pankaj Chaturvedi said.
The ruling BJP is indulging in malpractices to win the by-elections by hook or by crook, Yadav said.
The Congress has demanded deployment of additional forces at 144 highly sensitive booths in Mungaoli constituency and at 60 booths in Kolaras, Yadav said.
When contacted, Madhya Pradesh's deputy chief electoral officer S S Bansal said, "We have already sent the complaint to the collectors for verification. It's not true that there are thousands of cases of irregularities.
"Discrepancies were found in a few cases, and the concerned officers are making a list of such persons. It will be provided to polling officers so that such voters are prevented from voting at more than one place," he said.
Also, voter slips would be bigger than usual, so that voter names and photographs are clearly visible as per the directives of the Election Commission, Bansal said.
The by-polls were necessitated due to the death of sitting Congress MLAs Mahendra Singh Kalukheda (Mungaoli) and Ram Singh Yadav (Kolaras).
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