Supreme Court notice to poll panel over duplication of voters

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has issued notice to the Election Commission on petitions filed by Congress leaders Kamal Nath and Sachin Pilot alleging duplication of voters in the voters’ list of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

A bench of Justices AK Sikri and Ashok Bhushan agreed to take up the matter on August 31 and asked the Election Commission to file its response by then.

Senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi made a brief submission on behalf of the two leaders. For Kamal Nath, he said the commission had refused to give a text board for the electoral roll in Madhya Pradesh, even as it did so in Rajasthan. The reason given by the commission is that a text board would affect the privacy of the electorate, which Singhvi termed as bizarre.

In their petitions, filed through advocate Varun Chopra, both Kamal Nath and Pilot have alleged that the updated electoral rolls of MP and Rajasthan include duplicate, repeat, multiple, illegal, invalid and false entries of voters.kamal Nath said he had submitted a detailed representation to the commission on June 3, 2018, highlighting 60 lakh such entries. He added that the commission had dropped more than 24 lakh voters from the list published in January 2018.

The poll panel has admitted that over 2.37 lakh photo entries have been found to be suspicious, unclear and blank.