Negligence of the presiding officer at a booth in Jungpura constituency has led to re-polling at a booth of 692 electorates in Sarai Kale Khan area. The polling will be held again on Saturday from 8 am to 5 pm.
The Election Commission has ordered re-polling at Booth No. 42 at the MCD primary co-ed school in Sarai Kale Khan after finding out that the record of mock voting, which was held prior to proper voting on December 4, was not deleted from the voting machine.
“We are conducting re-poll in one booth only. Unfortunately the mock voting data was not deleted from the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) which is the responsibility of the presiding officer of every booth,” said Vijay Dev, Chief Electoral Officer of Delhi.
Mock voting is a process which is carried out in every booth to assure the political parties that the voting machinery is tested and is working properly. “In this process, some of the representatives of political parties and election officers cast mock votes which are only to test the correctness of the machine. These votes could be 50-60 in number and as a part of the protocol they have to be deleted before proper polling takes place,” explained Dev.
On being asked about the negligence on the part of the officer responsible for clearing the data, Dev said that a stern action will be taken against the officer soon.
The candidates contesting from this Assembly constituency are Tarjinder Singh Marwah (Congress), Pankaj Jain (BJP), Maninder Singh Dhir (AAP) and Suresh Gupta (BSP).
According to the previous records of the CEO, the capital last saw re-polling during Assembly elections in 2008 in nine polling booths in constituencies of Burari and Matiala after the EVM machines were found defective and incidents of bogus voting were reported.