Responding to a petition seeking a judicial probe against the State Election Commission (SEC) for deletion of names from electorate rolls during the first phase of a two-tier local-self Government polls, the Gujarat High Court on Thursday issued a notice to SEC.
The petitioner KR Koshti who is also an advocate in his petition said that all those whose names had been deleted from the electoral rolls and held valid poll identity
documents should be permitted to cast their votes as an interim relief.
According to the petitioner wilful neglect of duties on parts of responsible officials in SEC resulted in to the large scale deletion of names from voters list during the elections of six Municipal Corporations including Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara, Rajkot, Bhavnagar and Jamnagar conducted on last Sunday. The matter will be taken up for hearing on Friday.
Earlier, also the SEC was at the receiving end of the High Court’s criticism for playing second fiddle to the Anandiben Patel government in seeking to delay the holding of elections. “If polling can be held in Jammu & Kashmir, surely it can be held in Gujarat”, the court had remarked directing it to conduct the local self Government body elections forthwith.
According to several reports, almost 1.03 lakh voters in these six municipal corporations found their votes deleted when they went to cast their votes. Interestingly, names of Patels who have been agitating against the BJP Government in Gujarat seeking quotas to government jobs and educational institutions, were found to be deleted.