Probe report submitted, action likely soon

LUCKNOW: The axe may finally fall on over a dozen government employees and zonal officers of the Lucknow Municipal Corporation (LMC) for irregularities in voter lists used during civic polls in Lucknow district on November 26 last year, a senior official in the state election commission said.

The commissioner Lucknow division, in his fresh report submitted to the State Election Commission (SEC) last week, admitted to supervisory lapses on part of polling staff resulting into irregularities in voter lists and chaos in many areas on the polling day. The probe has held the supervisory polling staff responsible for their failure to ensure that voter slips were delivered to all the eligible voters at their door-steps well before the polling day and also that that all the VIPs who were voters in their areas necessarily had their names in the electoral rolls.

The commissioner has, in his report, held more than a dozen assistant returning officers (AROs) and booth-level officers (BLOs) accountable for missing of hundreds of eligible voters’ names from the electoral rolls.

He has written to the concerning departments to take action against them and intimate to him as well as the state election commission about the action taken.

“The commission has received the report from the divisional commissioner who has written to the departments concerned to take action against employees/ officials who were then appointed AROs and BLOs for the civic polls in the city for missing of a large number of voters’ names from the voter’s lists,” disclosed the SEC official, who did not wish to be identified. The SEC had earlier rejected the commissioner’s probe report in December terming it as ‘vitiated’ and ‘unacceptable’ asking him to set up a fresh inquiry and submit the report to the commission by January 17.

The commission’s main objection was to the fact that additional district magistrate (ADM), finance, who was also election registration officer, was also on the inquiry panel. The commission’s another objection was that the inquiry committee had sought to put all the blame on the BLOs without making the supervisory officials accountable.

The commissioner is said to have taken these objections into consideration in the fresh report. “The fresh panel did comprise the then ADM who has been transferred from Lucknow district and supervisory officials like AROs were also brought into the purview of the probe,” the SEC official said.