Exorcising ghosts from voters' list

NK SINGH

The detection of a large number of ghost voters in Madhya Pradesh has raised heckles of the Congress party that is gearing up for state assembly elections due in five months. It rushed to the Election Commission (EC) of India this week, alleging 60 lakh bogus voters --- almost every tenth voters registered on the electoral roll. The EC ordered a probe with extraordinary alacrity the same day and rushed its teams for an on-the-spot scrutiny to MP almost immediately. 

The Congress points out that even as population had increased by 24 percent, the number of voters shot up by 40 per cent. It went up from 3.81 crore in 2014 to 5.07 crore in 2017. "These are not merely mistakes, "said MP Congress president Kamal Nath, "I suspect deliberate mischief." 

Everyone agrees that a problem exists. Everyone except the BJP. The ruling party has no problem with the voters' list. It seems to think that the Congress is levelling baseless allegations because of its impending defeat. 

However, the EC concedes that during a special campaign to verify voters list undertaken from March 15 to April 7, it detected 6.73 lakh 'ineligible' voters in MP --- dead, registered at two places, migrated or simply 'not found'. 

The Congress party submitted 101 CDs to the EC as proof of irregularities. A few examples: In Narela constituency there are 10,568 voters with the same name, same age and same name of father/ husband, 1610 double entries, 420 missing voters and 2,200 voters who had shifted. Hundreds of voters' cards had women's photographs instead of men's photographs and vice versa. Scores of voters' cards carried the same man's photo! 


The EC recognises the problem. In fact, at one time, MP had as many as 68 lakh entries in the electoral rolls that were considered suspicious. "It was our software that detected it under our national electoral roll purification drive," says chief election commissioner of India OP Rawat. By January this year, when the draft voters' list was published, the number of 'ineligible' voters came down to 7. 5 lakh. Now it stands at 5 lakh. 

Authenticating, weeding out and updating electoral rolls are a continuous process around the year. Total number of voters stood at 5.07 crore by the end of October last year. Today it has come down to 5.02 crore, showing that the EC pruned 5 lakh 'ineligible' voters. 

The problem of bogus voters' list hit the headline first on the eve of Mungaoli and Kolaras assembly by-elections earlier this year when the Congress complained just a week before polling that the lists in the two constituencies contained 25,000 duplicate or bogus voters.

The EC moved swiftly and removed the Collector of Ashoknagar for irregularities in electoral rolls. Mungaoli (Ashoknagar) electoral roll contained 19,988 voters who shared same name, same gender and same name of father/husband. It had 1,539 voters who shared not only the same name/gender/relative but also the same age! 

The Ashoknagar fiasco triggered off the special campaign to verify voters' list that detected 6.73 lakh ineligible voters in April. It was not only EC that acted. MP State EC, which conducts municipal and panchayat election in the state, asked the collectors as early as March 7 to undertake a revision of the electoral rolls. 

Drawing their attention to the problematic voters' list in the assembly by-elections, State EC chairman R Parasuram expressed his concern that some complaints had also been received during polling for 22 municipalities earlier this year. He actually formed special teams headed by 31 observers and rushed them to districts. "Now we are focussing on the six places where civic elections are due this year so that we don't receive any complaint," says Parasuram.

Apparently, many collectors, who are responsible for verifying the voters' list, have failed in their primary duty as returning officers to provide an error-free electoral roll. And the chief electoral officer of MP has been caught napping. In fact, in recent times the MP government has systematically tried to undermine the authority of the EC of India. 

There are plenty of cases where the state government has posted back the officers removed by EC for partisan or negligent work as soon as the polling is over, sending wrong signals to government servants. In fact, in some cases it has actually rewarded the officers punished by the EC. Pliable officers know that EC's writ runs only for a month and after that their political masters will come to their rescue. 

The Election Commission has to act tough if it wants to maintain the sanctity of elections, the foundation of parliamentary democracy. 

Powers That Be, my column in DB Post of 9 June 2018

nksexpress@gmail.com
Tweets @nksexpress