Karnataka - Bidar   

Doctors protest against KMC election process

Staff Correspondent

BIDAR: A few doctors in Bidar have complained to the Medical Council of India (MCI) that elections to the Karnataka Medical Council (KMC) are not being held in a proper and scientific manner.

"Elections to the KMC are being held by a postal ballot, and doctors are the voters. The KMC is supposed to send the ballot papers to the voters by post. The last date for sending the ballots is Thursday. However, even till Wednesday, most doctors in Bidar had not received the ballot papers," said Rajshekar Koujalagi, a signatory to the complaint.

There are about 400 doctors in Bidar, of whom about 200 were in Government service and the rest in private practice. Only around 25 percent of them had got ballot papers, he said. The complaint also said a few doctors had discovered that some candidates had ballot papers in their possession. "I saw that a candidate from Gulbarga had a ballot paper meant for my sister, Prema Koujalagi, who is a surgeon. When I asked him how he had got the ballot, he said he had obtained it from a private courier service provider. We suspect some candidates are using the ballots illegally to cast votes in their own favour. This amounts to sabotaging our right to vote," Mr. Koujalagi said.

He said the doctors would resort to the legal option if no action followed, he said.

However, KMC's Returning Officer B. Vinayak, when contacted, denied the allegations. "There is no problem with the distribution of ballot papers," he said.

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