SC rejects Pilot, Kamal Nath plea on Rajasthan, MP electoral rolls
NEWDELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed two separate petitions by senior Congress leaders Kamal Nath and Sachin Pilot — one demanding the voters’ list in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan be provided in text format and the other seeking directions to the Election Commission to randomly verify at least 10 % Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips with votes cast on electronic voting machines (EVMS).
Polls in Madhya Pradesh will be held on November 28 and in Rajasthan on December 7.
On the plea seeking directions to the Election Commission that the voters’ list be published in a “text format “instead of the PDF format, a bench of justices AK Sikri and Ashok Bhushan held that such format will mean a publication of the list that will contain only the text of the elector’s details such as his name, address, and age, and not his or her photograph.
Kamal Nath had approached the Supreme Court highlighting various duplicate, illegal, invalid and false entries/voters in the electoral rolls of Madhya Pradesh for the ensuing assembly elections.
He had argued that political parties should be provided voters’ list in text format so that they are in a position to scan and find out whether there are any duplicate or fake voters in the rolls prepared by the EC.
However, the poll panel, in an affidavit filed on September 18, had justified providing the draft electoral roll in PDF format in Madhya Pradesh without the pictures of the voters and said it was done to prevent manipulation of electors’ data.
Dismissing the pleas, the apex court also lauded the impartial role of the EC in conducting elections.
“There is no doubt about the bona fides of the ECI... In the last 25-30 years, ECI has built up the reputation of an i mpartial body...,” the Supreme Court said. HYDERABAD : Maoist ideologue and popular revolutionary balladeer Gaddar on Friday rejected an invitation extended by Congress president Rahul Gandhi to join the party, but expressed his willingness to contest as an independent against Telangana CM K Chandrasekhar Rao in the assembly polls. Gaddar, along with his wife and son, met Rahul in the afternoon and his mother Sonia Gandhi in the evening in New Delhi. Gaddar said the Congress president had invited him into the party but he had politely rejected. “I told him I have already been with the people for several decades and I don’t need any political party at this stage. For that matter, I will not join any political party I will continue my journey as a balladeer and campaign for secular forces,” he said. BHOPAL: The Madhya Pradesh Congress appears to be in a bind over the Ram Van Gaman Path Yatra started by one Harishankar Shukla of Chitrakoot. State Congress chief Kamal Nath had announced last month that his party will construct the Ram Van Gaman Path in Chikrakoot, said to be the abode of Lord Ram for 11 of the 14 years of his exile and is also the place where poetsaint Tulsidas wrote his version of the Ramayana epic. Nath’s announcement was aimed at cornering chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who had on different occasions promised to construct the path to tell the story about Ram’s stay in Chitrakoot, but the proposal was never implemented. The Congress had formed a committee and the yatra was launched. The Congress, however, distanced itself after the rath (bus) used in Shukla’s yatra was seized by the Dindori district administration on Tuesday night following a complaint by a local BJP leader. JAIPUR: The anger among the electorate against the BJP government in Rajasthan is coming out at various public platforms, much to the discomfiture of its leaders. Two BJP leaders, V Satish, national general secretary, and Satish Poonia, co-convenor of the party’s state election management committee, had to face the anger of workers against the district president in Barmer, leading to a scuffle.
In Jaipur, the state BJP in-charge Avinash Rai Khanna had to ask a legislator to shut up when he started speaking about infighting in the party. Khanna said he will suspend the MLA if he didn’t leave the meeting. In another such meeting in Jaipur, a worker talked about how party MPS did not campaign in constituencies that were not covered by chief minister Vasundhara Raje’s recently-concluded Gaurav Yatra.
In Kota, a worker stood up and started reciting a poem against demonetization and GST, upon which junior Union agriculture minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat asked him to sit down. As the partyman refused, the meeting was called off. Earlier, several BJP leaders, including CM Raje, had to face the ire of BJP workers during different public functions.