At polling booth number 103 at the Government Primary School in Badal village, “someone” comes and polled the vote in place of Manpreet Singh Badal, who happens to be Punjab’s Finance Minister, and the state poll panel neither received any complaint in this regard, nor did it take note of the same.
Even Manpreet, who was in Chandigarh on Sunday owing to his bad health when “someone” cast his vote more than 250 kilometres away in Badal village of Sri Muktsar Sahib district, did not bother to raise the issue with the State Election Commission.
Amidst all this, the presiding officer of the said polling booth comes into light.
“I was suffering from the fever from last two days and I could not cast my vote in my village. Only the presiding officer can tell who polled my vote in my absence,” said Manpreet on Monday.
At the same time, he quipped that one Manpreet Singh Badal, who had contested against him earlier, “could have polled my vote”.
However, he expressed concern over the episode, but denied filing any complaint with the Commission. “It is a clear violation of rules and should not have happened,” that’s all he said. On the other hand, the state poll panel said that their priority, as of now, was to conduct the re-elections. Maintaining that the Commission has not received a single complaint in this regard from anyone, including the opposition parties, the State Election Commission secretary Dr Kamal Kumar made it clear that even the details regarding the same have not been asked for.
Notably, during polling in Badal village a day before, someone polled Manpreet’s vote while he was in Chandigarh. None of the polling agents of Congress-backed and SAD-backed candidates or the polling staff present inside the polling booth raised any objection to it.
In fact, the polling agents and staff were also not aware who polled the vote on behalf of Manpreet. In the voter list of polling staff, the vote was also seen marked as “polled”.