Congress alleges scam ahead of polls

Mumbai: With barely 20 days left for the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) polls, Congress has caused a stir by alleging a scam in the enrolment of voters. Several irregularities have been found in the voters’ list, which is likely to encourage bogus voting, the party has alleged.

Sheetal Mhatre, Congress corporator from Dahisar, has said that there is discrepancy in the number of voters in wards, which has defeated the whole purpose of delimitation. Apart from this, irregularities like change in names, addresses etc are likely to confuse the voters, she has said.

Giving the example of ward no 1 in Dahisar, Ms Mhatre said, “The whole delimitation process was carried out basically for equal distribution of population which comes to 45,000-50,000 on an average per ward. But ward no 1 has only about 24,000 voters a population of 50,000, whereas in ward no 194, the voter count is about 61,000 and the population is 58,000, which means the voter count is more than the population. In the final voter list, more than 40 per cent voters don’t fall in the new delimitation boundaries.”

In a letter written to the State Election Commission (SEC) Ms Mhatre said, “My brother Hardik Ashok Mhatre has been issued a voter card on the new address with his name appearing as Hardik Ashok Mehta. Similarly my mother Rashmi Ashok Mhatre, who has a voter ID on her residential address, has been issued a new voter ID on a new address.”

Filing of nominations for the civic body polls has been started and still the final rectified voter list with photographs has not been published, which will encourage bogus voting, she added.

While State Election Commissioner J.S. Saharia remained unavailable for comments, a senior BMC official said, “The voters’ list was prepared on the basis of lists from Election Commission of India. Moreover, the list was put up for suggestions and objection from the people. We received 139 suggestions and objections and changes were done accordingly in the list.”