Bhopal: A probe committee set up by the Election Commission has debunked the Congress party’s claim of the existence of over 60 lakh fake voters in Madhya Pradesh as it found no bogus entries in the electoral roll.
The report submitted by the committee to the poll panel on Friday states that while there were no fake voters, 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 were 68 lakh in 2015-16 and this has come down to 7 lakh this year.
The EC had on Sunday ordered a probe into allegations of large-scale discrepancies in the voters’ list of MP after the Congress submitted ‘proof’ to support its allegation. The poll panel formed four teams, consisting of two members each, to probe the matter.
Congress state chief Kamal Nath, who led a delegation to the poll panel, had alleged that the voter lists were tampered with at the behest of the Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led BJP government.
The Congress had even submitted a list of the names, saying that it had found that people with the same name and same photos were enlisted in different constituencies after conducting a survey in around 100 constituencies.
Nath, while speaking to News18, had even claimed that the Congress would have won the previous Assembly election in MP had there been no fake voters. “We believe that 12 per cent of the voters are false. Last time the difference between BJP & Congress was 6-7 per cent. Had there been no false voters, the results would have been different,” Nath had said.
According to sources, the Election Commission will now write to the Madhya Pradesh Chief Election Officer, asking him to update the electoral roll immediately and to ensure that there are no repeated entries during the Assembly elections later this month.
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