Taking serious note of the involvement of certain officials in issuing fake voter ID cards, the Election Commission of India has initiated the process to register criminal cases against the officials and employees found responsible. The election watchdog has also decided to punish those citizens who are the beneficiary of this fraud. The commission started the exercise to identify fake voters following reports that a large number of people had enrolled themselves as voters in violation of the rules. In order to identify the bogus, the commission is also mulling to incorporate Aadhaar number with the voter ID card in the near future.
It may be noted that the city had 1.19 crore registered voters in the last Assembly elections. The EC had deleted 15 fake and duplicate voters from the electoral rolls in 2012. The commission has added about 2.5 lakh new voters so far. The EC is now carrying out the summary revision of the electoral rolls. The last date for applying for the new voter ID was October 10. All those who had applied within the set time frame will figure in the revised electoral roll on January 5, 2015. The names of the new applicants who have applied after the October 10 deadline will be incorporated in the supplementary electoral list.
As a large number of people have complained about the existence of fake voters in different constituencies, the Commission is busy scrutinising the identity of these card holders.
A highly placed source said the electoral rolls were having a large number of those people who had got themselves registered under different names. For instance, 25 women voters have the same photograph pasted against their names in the Uttam Nagar seat. In the same constituency, 98 voters are said to be registered with the same photograph. There are reportedly 1,357 similar cases in Uttam Nagar, 3,754 cases in Mundka and 510 in Janakpuri. A local leader claimed that about 700 voters who had recently cast their votes in the Alwar district of Rajasthan figure in the electoral rolls of a city constituency.