Bogus voters: Election Commission of India team to visit Gujarat

The Election Commission of India (ECI) seems to have taken a serious note of the reports brought out by Gujarat Congress alleging that Gujarat's electoral list has over 30 lakh fake voters.

A five-member team of ECI is likely to visit the state in the next fortnight to meet senior government officials, including chief secretary AK Joti, to seek investigation into the loopholes pointed out by Congress, and rectify the rolls before the nagarpalika and corporation polls in October this year.

State Congress president Siddharth Patel said a team of senior Congress leaders met ECI in Delhi last week and the ECI is likely to send a team to Gujarat to "look into our the complaints and supervise revision of the electoral rolls".

But some confusion seems to be prevailing over whose job it is to revise the rolls before the corporation elections.

Sources in the state government confided that the ECI has initiated a detailed inquiry into the complaint but has no role to play in the local body elections.

"The electoral rolls are provided by ECI to the state election commission (SEC) but they have no further responsibility in it. It is for the SEC to revise and update the rolls," the officer said.

The ECI, he added, is in any case revising its rolls and will examine the irregularities pointed out by Congress, but the new list will be ready only by mid-September and that would be too late to incorporate the changes for the local body elections in October.

"It is a mammoth task to examine the alleged lacunae of almost 30 lakh bogus voters. It will certainly take a lot of time," he added.

Meanwhile, SEC chief KC Kapoor said, "Our job starts only after ECI gives us the rolls. If they revise the rolls, we will take it too."

However, Patel clarified that given the urgency of the local body elections in October, Congress leaders have impressed upon them that the rectification should be done before then by the SEC.

"The enormity of the irregularities is huge enough to alter the election results," Patel said.