EC catches Jagmohan on the wrong foot

For once the Bharatiya Janata Party Member of Parliament from New Delhi and Union Tourism and Culture Minister, Jagmohan, has been caught on the wrong foot and that too by none other than the Election Commission.

Investigating a recent letter by Mr. Jagmohan, in which he had alleged that there were a large number of duplicate and bogus voters in the electoral rolls of the New Delhi Parliamentary constituency, the Commission found that they were “not backed by actual and physical verification” of the voter’s list. A similar letter had been written to the Union Labour Minister, Sahib Singh Verma, who represents Outer Delhi Parliamentary seat.

Giving specific instances from the list of alleged bogus and duplicate electoral rolls, the Commission in a letter to the both the Union Ministers is understood to have observed that their list was not only “erroneous, but also misleading”.

The letter is also understood to have pulled up the Minister for not using the opportunity provided by the Election Commission during the recently concluded annual revision of electoral rolls. Stating that only 712 Form 7 (for objecting inclusion of names in the draft voter’s list) had been received during this drive, the Commission is understood to have observed that the list of duplicate and bogus voters was not signed. As many as 20,000 names were deleted from voter’s list during this drive, the Commission pointed out.

Referring to investigations carried out by the Commission staff, the letter is understood to have pointed out that the alleged list was based on old electoral rolls. “A large number of them were already deleted from the new roll,” it said. Pointing to the list provided by Mr.Jagmohan, it said that majority of them were genuine voters. “We just cannot delete names of citizens from the electoral rolls if the name of two voters happens to be the same,” the official said.

During its investigations, the Commission found that while the father of A. Varugheshe (38) was V. K. Varughese, while the husband of A. Varugheshe (65) was V.K. Varughese. Though both were residents of different colonies in New Delhi, as per the list provided by the Minister, A Varugheshe was a duplicate voter. Similar is the case with two voters in the name of A. K. Singh, the names of their father happened to be the same R. P. Singh. On investigations, the Commission found that while one 39-year old A. K. Singh was the resident of Assam Bhawan in Chanakyapuri, another A. K. Singh (36) was a resident of R. K. Ashram Marg.

Investigations found that while the wife of 40-year-old A. K. Sen, son of R. P. Sen, was S. Sen, and that of another A. K. Sen (44), son of R. P. Sen, was Rattna Sen. Similar is the case with three voters having the name Ajay. Incidentally, the father’s name of these three voters had the same name: Om Prakash. However, when the Commission checked the data, it found the mother’s names to be different: Sona Devi, Shanti Devi and Bhagwati.

Claiming that the list of duplicate voters was detected by a software from the electoral rolls, senior Commission official observed that had the BJP workers and its leaders done some homework by carrying out some personal verification, such a situation of giving wrong information would not have taken place.

However, Mr. Jagmohan denied the allegations and stood by his stand that the electoral rolls need to be cleaned up. “The fact that a number of names have been deleted after they were found to be duplicate in the annual revision of electoral rolls indicates that during recently concluded Assembly elections there were a large number of duplicate voters,” he said.