Congress candidate from Budhni Mahendra Singh Chouhan in a memorandum to Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Madhya Pradesh Jaideep Govind demanded action against the District Returning Officer (DRO) and other officers responsible for cancellation of postal ballots.
Mahendra Singh in his memorandum to the CEO said that criminal case be registered against the district collector and DRO and other officers responsible for the cancellation of postal ballots in Budhni Assembly constituency.
Mahendra Singh is pitted against Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan from Budhni.
Mahendra Singh alleged that the DRO Kavindra Kiyawat on the one hand tried his best to influence the polling in favour of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and on the other hand by colliding with the Budhni assembly constituency’s Returning Officer (RO) under pressure from chief minister inspired government officials and employees indulged in polling duty to vote in favour of BJP. For this closed door room meetings in the name of training were held and telephone was also used for the purpose. The employees casting vote through postal ballot were told that Shivraj Singh Chouhan is again going to be chief minister why you want confront with himIJ Not only this they were also threatened by saying that we are having the complete list with serial numbers of ballot allotted to them and we would come to know that to whom have you voted for.
He said that the DRO should have remained extra vigilant and should have adopted more transparency in Budhni as this was the constituency from where chief minister was contesting, but he was not serious over his duties. This could be gauged from the fact that 33 postal ballots found in possession of wrong hands were cancelled. This was not a mistake but an example of forgery committed by the DRO, he added.