Pilibhit: Days after irregularities involving the details of over 13,000 voters in a Pilibhit assembly constituency led to an FIR against two sub-divisional magistrates (SDMs) and a voter registration centre operator, Congress leader Kumud Gangwar on Saturday accused the administration of trying to “cover up the matter” by obtaining signatures from affected voters on Form 8, used to correct entries in electoral rolls.
Meanwhile, a separate dispute over electoral rolls has emerged in the neighbouring Bisalpur assembly constituency, where Samajwadi Party women’s wing national secretary Divya Gangwar claimed to have found nearly 6,000 suspected duplicate voter entries.
Divya said the scrutiny was still underway and that the number of questionable entries could exceed 15,000. Kumud, an All India Congress Committee (AICC) member who had earlier flagged changes to the names of 13,150 voters belonging to a particular community and religion, alleged that officials had prepared undated Form 8 applications and given them to booth-level officers (BLOs) to obtain voters’ signatures. He also claimed that the forms were distributed on Oct 24, a day earmarked by the Election Commission of India (ECI) for enrolling first-time voters aged 18 through Form 6. Additional district magistrate Prasoon Dwivedi said Form 8 was required to correct the affected voters’ details under election rules. The earlier FIR was registered against SDMs and electoral registration officers Mayank Goswami and Hemant Chaudhary, along with outsourced voter registration centre operator Anil Kumar, over unauthorised changes to voter details in the 127-Pilibhit assembly constituency.
“If the mistake is to be amended in accordance with the law and rules of election commission, Form 8 from all affected voters will be an indispensable requirement for correcting their names and particulars, as this is the only document to rectify the error,” he said. UP chief electoral officer Navdeep Rinwa had described the changes as a “criminal act rather than a mistake”. In some cases, she claimed, the electoral photo identity card (EPIC) numbers and photographs were also identical. She has sent a detailed report to the ECI, UP’s chief electoral officer and the President of India, seeking an investigation by a high-level panel. Addressing a press conference, he questioned why voters were being asked to sign the forms when their names had already been changed without their consent. Following Kumud’s allegations, Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee election coordinator Mohd Anas Khan wrote to the state’s chief electoral officer, seeking an impartial judicial probe, disciplinary action against the officials involved and registration of an FIR.
On Saturday, she alleged that the same voters’ details, including their fathers’ or husbands’ names, appeared at multiple polling booths.