Take 44 lakh bogus voters off list: Congress

Mumbai: A delegation of state Congress leaders on Wednesday demanded that the Election Commission of India (ECI) remove bogus voter names from the electoral roll. The Congress leaders claimed that there were 44.61 lakh bogus voters in the state. The NCP, meanwhile, demanded that the expenditure per candidate be raised from '28 lakh to '60 lakh.

The Congress delegation — led by Rajesh Sharma, general secretary of the state Congress — met the chief election commissioner (CEC) Sunil Arora at Sahyadri guest house Wednesday. It gave a list of 44.61 lakh bogus voters to Mr Arora, demanding that these names be deleted. The delegation also demanded that the election be held using ballot paper instead of electronic voting machines (EVMs).

Mr Sharma said, “We have demanded that the election be held using ballot paper instead of EVMs. Besides this, the bogus voters should be deleted from the electoral rolls.

Significantly, the state Congress had given a list of 44.61 lakh bogus voters, with proof, to the EC, during a meeting with the CEC ahead of the Lok Sabha election on February 25, 2019.

The Congress leader said that all bogus voters had not been deleted from the electoral roll, even till date. However, the EC informed that it had deleted 2.16 lakh bogus voters so far and the process of deleting names was underway.

Mr Sharma said, “If the elections have to be free and fair and also transparent, there is a need for these bogus names to be deleted.”

NCP spokesperson Nawab Malik said that the party demanded that the EC raise the expenditure limit from '28 lakh to '60 lakh.

He said that the party asked the EC to consider the Diwali festival days before deciding the dates of the Assembly election as citizens are likely to visit their native places during Diwali vacations.

The CEC is in Mumbai to take stock of the state’s preparedness ahead of the Assembly election in Maharashtra. The CEC held a meeting with all political parties to understand their problems.