Supreme Court seeks EC's response on duplicate voters in MP, Rajasthan
New Delhi, Aug 23 : The Supreme Court on Thursday sought the Election Commission's response on a plea by Congress leaders alleging the existence of a large number of duplicate voters in electoral rolls in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
A bench of Justice A.K. Sikri and Justice Ashok Bhushan also sought a response from the State Election Commission as senior counsel Abhishek Manu Singhvi told the court that the EC was denying them the voters list in text mode citing privacy whereas in Rajasthan they had provided it in text mode.
Singhvi said the Election Commission manual itself mandates that text mode voters list would be made available to the contesting candidate and political parties. The court was informed that the last date for raising objections to the voters list ended on August 21.
Senior Congress leader Kamal Nath has moved to the top court raising issue of Madhya Pradesh and Sachin Pilot that of Rajasthan. Besides the voters list, there are other issues related to the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT).
The court was told that they had pointed to the presence of 60 lakh duplicate voters in 102 Assembly constituencies in Madhya Pradesh and 42 lakh in Rajasthan, Singhvi said.
Senior counsel Vivek Tankha said that after initially contesting the presence of 60 lakh duplicate voters in the voters list in Madhya Pradesh, they had deleted 24 lakh names.
Speaking to media persons after the hearing, Tankha said that besides duplicate votes, there were issues of fake votes as well.
He said in one instance in Madhya Pradesh, a small dwelling showed 20 or more voters while in Rajasthan there were 100 voters with the same address.
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MP boat tragedy: Death toll climbs to 13; body of last missing person recovered
Jabalpur (PTI): The bodies of a five-year-old boy and his uncle were recovered from Bargi Dam in Madhya Pradesh's Jabalpur district on Sunday morning, raising the death toll in the cruise boat tragedy to 13, police said.
The boat, around 20 years old and operated by the state tourism department, capsized during a storm on Thursday evening.
"The bodies of Mayuram (5) and his uncle Kamraj (around 50), an employee of the Ordnance Factory in Khamaria, were found floating and were fished out of the dam," Bargi Sub Divisional Officer of Police Anjul Ayank Mishra told PTI over the phone.
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All 13 missing persons identified have now been accounted for, he said, adding the bodies were sent to a government hospital for postmortem.
Teams comprising around 20 Army divers airlifted from Agra, along with personnel from the National Disaster Response Force, State Disaster Response Force and local divers, were involved in the search operation, the police said.
Of the 41 identified passengers on board the vessel, 28 were rescued after the incident, according to the police.
The CCTV footage near the boarding point showed 43 people heading towards the boat, though the identities of 41 passengers have been confirmed so far, they said.
The state government on Friday ordered a probe into the incident and dismissed three crew members. It also banned the operation of similar vessels in the state.
