Hours after the Congress party approached Election Commission alleging mishandling of EVMs in Madhya Pradesh, the Congress workers found postal ballots lying unattended inside a canteen of MP Police Headquarters (PHQ) here on Tuesday.

 The voting through postal ballots was undertaken in Bhopal on November 18 and around 4,000 of these paper ballots were issued to police staffers who were engaged in poll duties. Personnel from the police, special armed forces (SAF), home guards, special police officers had taken part in these postal ballots which need to reach the EC by December 11 the day of counting.

 Meanwhile, the Congress workers had found these postal ballots from a canteen of Home Guards' office which is situated besides police headquarters in Bhopal in Jehangirabad locality.

 Congress leader Krishna Ghatge told, "I had received an input and as I reached the Home Guard canteen on Tuesday, I found three envelopes of postal ballots outside the canteen and there were around 250 more such envelopes inside, unattended. I had learnt the postal ballots were lying at the canteen for last three days." Ghatge alleged saying the party would complain to Chief Electoral Officer MP over this serious lapse on Wednesday.

 While talking to media persons, Congress candidate from Bhopal South-West PC Sharma said, "We had recovered the postal ballots on the table of Home Guard canteen unattended and some of the envelopes were open." He alleged that the authorities have made a mockery of the polling process in MP while referring to the EVMs and other anomalies. The officer present on the spot expressed ignorance about the reason why postal ballots were lying in the open.

The incident comes close on the heels of several incidents which have put question marks on the safety of EVMs. It started with a polling officer who was found with EVMs in a hotel room in Shujalpur a night prior to polling and then large numbers of EVMs malfunctioned in MP especially at Satna on the day of polling on November 28.