Delhi Polls: HC pulls up poll agencies for error in voter list

NEW DELHI: A day after election dates were announced, the Delhi high court on Tuesday pulled up the Election Commission and the state's electoral office, demanding an explanation from both on the presence of errors such as duplication of photographs and names in the voters' list for the assembly polls.

Justice Vibhu Bakhru said that the errors could mean that there are people who have more than one voter card under different names.

The court directed the poll panel to verify whether errors like same photograph appearing against different names have been translated into voter ID cards. It further demanded an affidavit to answer allegations leveled by petitioner and ex-Congress leader, Naresh Kumar, indicating entries in the latest electoral roll showing pictures of same person against different names.

Kumar, who had unsuccessfully contested on a Congress ticket from Mundka in the 2013 Delhi assembly polls, has alleged the presence of large number of bogus voters in the capital.

In response, the ECI and chief electoral officer (CEO) told the court that they came to know about the errors on December 8 last year and have been trying to correct them since then. The poll authorities said the errors occurred due to multiple applications and mistakes in data entry or due to technical glitches which caused duplicate entries. EC told the court that it used a software to detect the duplicate entries and conducted a house-to-house physical verification of the double entries. The Commission also said rectification was an ongoing process and would continue till the filing of nominations by the candidates.

In its affidavit, the CEO conceded there were mistakes in the electoral list and said it was working to rectify the mistakes and was also trying to identify the persons who caused the error.