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Duplicate votes in Malviya Nagar, alleges ex-Minister

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI SEPT. 23. The former Delhi Transport Minister, Rajendra Gupta, today alleged that large-scale duplicate votes had been registered in his Malviya Nagar constituency. On the other hand, senior BJP leaders, Vijay Kumar Malhotra and Madan Lal Khurana, today once again accused the Election Commission of India of bias and indifference that had led to registration of large number of bogus votes in Delhi.

In a statement, Mr. Gupta alleged that the sitting Congress MLA, Yoganand Shastri, had got 18 votes registered at his residence, which was a farce. In fact, the names of the same voters figure in Bhalaswa Jehangirpuri voters' lists as Mr. Shastri's relatives stay there. He said there are several duplications at the residence of the former Mayor, Jaishree Panwar.

Mr. Gupta said he had also written to the Additional District Magistrate, Saket, and he had promised him that whatever discrepancies had occurred would be set right. In fact, the former Minister claimed that the ADM had admitted that names were occurring twice in the same polling station and it had been edited accordingly. However, still the names, which have cropped up in more than one polling station, have not been looked into.

Stating that he had never been informed about or given any letter by the election official rejecting his claim of bogus and duplicate votes, Mr. Gupta said at no point of time he had been asked by officials concerned to sign the voters' lists submitted by him so the question of not signing them did not arise. He alleged that in Khirki Extension, there were some blocks where voters have been enrolled. But surprisingly, these blocks do not even exist in that area. Mr. Gupta said he along with his supporters would be meeting the ADM on September 26 to sort out the matter regarding the fictitious votes.

Meanwhile, both Mr. Malhotra and Mr. Khurana have today said that a list of 4.94 lakh voters, whose names appear at two or more places, has been sent to the Chief Election Commissioner, J.M. Lyngdoh. Next week, they said, the party would scrutinise all Parliamentary voters' lists, which would further expose this network of bogus votes. Pointing to large-scale anomalies in the lists, they said that the Commission had been requested to publish the new rolls only after deleting the duplicate names. In fact, Mr. Malhotra once again lashed out at Mr. Lyngdoh for showing disrespect to the elected representatives and said it was unfortunate that the CEC had refused to meet the MPs of the national party even after making several requests in this regard.

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