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Journalism of Courage
Ahead of the counting of votes in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections this week, the Congress has alleged malpractice claiming that postal ballots were taken out of the strongroom in Balaghat, even as local officers said it was a routine exercise carried out before the representatives of both parties.
The Congress had submitted a memorandum to the Madhya Pradesh chief electoral officer seeking action against the Balaghat collector for allegedly taking postal ballots out of the strongroom and indulging in malpractice. This came after a video of officials sorting ballot papers from the strongroom went viral, following which local Congress party leaders reached the spot and made allegations of malpractice.
Congress vice president J P Dhanopia, who is the party’s in-charge of election affairs, alleged in the memorandum that postal ballots were taken out from the treasury room and handed over to the staff, who he said were handling them the way they wished.
Dhanopia said their (postal ballots) sanctity is under suspicion now, and sought the suspension of Balaghat Collector Girish Chandra Mishra and all employees associated with the process.
On Monday, Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Anupam Rajan denied the allegations and said local Congress leaders have expressed satisfaction with the procedure.
While speaking to reporters, Rajan said, “Service votes (postal ballots) were being segregated Assembly-wise by taking them out from the strongroom in the presence of authorised Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party agents”.
On his part, Mishra said the strongroom, created in the local tehsil office, was opened in the presence of authorised polling agents of parties to segregate the incoming postal ballots.
“We had informed both Congress and BJP representatives that the returning officer would open the postal ballot strongroom. The returning officer informed me that the objective of opening the strongroom was to sort the postal ballots. There was no counting of postal ballots,” Mishra said.
“We had made a panchnama (record of observation) and shared it with the representatives of both parties. In the whole exercise right from opening the strongroom to sealing it, Nirala Singh Baghel and Krishna Gopal Bisen, the representatives of the Congress party were present, and so were the BJP representatives,” he added.
Later, Congress city unit president Shafkat Khan said the issue was the result of some confusion and his party was satisfied with the process after receiving an explanation and clarification from poll authorities.
“The strongroom was opened up in which postal ballots were cast. We were sorting the ballots and putting them into bundles and not counting the votes. There was confusion after news came out that there was a counting of votes,” Khan said.
“When we reached the centre, the person in charge was unable to answer our questions, because of which we spoke to the collector. We are now satisfied. We wanted the authorities to inform us,” he said.
The votes polled in the November 17 MP Assembly elections will be counted on December 3.
