CHENNAI: The Election Commission has detected a large number of bogus applications for inclusion in the electoral rolls in Madurai.

Byelection to the Madurai West seat, which fell vacant after the death of MLA S.V. Shanmugham in February, has to be held by August 2007.

Chief Electoral Officer Naresh Gupta on Thursday wrote to the Madurai Collector asking him to verify all the claims for inclusion in the rolls. The "strong letter" warned the District Election authorities that the Election Commission would be forced to depute a team to check the rolls if it was not done properly by the district administration.

The Commission could also depute a senior civil servant from another State to oversee the whole process, election officials said.

This was done in some places in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and could also be done here if the impartiality of the district administration could not be guaranteed, according to the Commission.

Proof of mischief

In the first instance, the Election Commission noticed that the number of applicants for inclusion in the rolls was 10 per cent of the electoral size.

This made the Commission sit up. It sent a team to Madurai to conduct random checks on the applications.

According to District Election Officials, many applications did not specify the old address of the applicant — a mandatory requirement for the Election Commission to check if the name of the person who had applied also figured in the rolls there. It was also found that in many applications, the handwriting was similar. "These two are proof enough of mischief," one official said.

Following this, the District Election authorities refused to include as many as 5,000 names. But the complaints did not subside. Hence, the CEO sent another team to again verify the claims for inclusions on the field.

The two-member team made random house visits to check the veracity of the applicants and found that there were many addresses where persons mentioned in the applications did not reside.

In a few households, the reply was that the person had gone out or that he/she was out of town. In a few other instances, where it was warranted, the team asked the persons who wanted their names included to affix their signature.

In many cases, it was found that the signature did not match, leading the team to conclude that all the applications for inclusion needed to be verified.

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