A delegation of Congress after meeting the chief electoral officer threatened to sit on dharna if no action was taken on its complaints. Congress alleged that commission is not working in a transparent manner to ensure free and fair elections in the state. A delegation of about a dozen Congress workers along with in-charge election work, J P Dhanopia reached heavily guarded election commission office at 4.30 in the evening. A huge posse of police force was present at the commission’s office on reports that Congress might stage a dharna.
As Congress workers reached the entrance of commission’s office, policemen deployed at the door stopped the workers and allowed only five representatives to meet the CEO, VL Kantha Rao. After meeting the CEO, JP Dhanopia said that five days have passed that there was an outage of power for about one and a half hour at the strong room in old jail premises. The video recording of that duration is missing. “We complained about incident in Khurai where EVMs reached late in a bus without registration number along with video and photo evidence but no action has been taken and we are not informed about any development,” said Dhanopia later talking to media persons.
Postal ballots were found abandoned in PHQ premises, Congress complaint along with video evidence, they (election commission) are not even replying on our complaints. Congress threatens dharna at election commission alleging no transparency and no action on its complaint. ‘Election Commission is not even replying to our complaints and we doubt its non-partial role’ said Congress. Leveling serious allegations against EC, Congress said that commission is not giving us information about number of malfunctioned EVMs and their serial number. It is not telling us about number of postal ballots in districts.
“We have given serial number of 5 machines from Bhopal and told them that seal of these machines have been found broken but EC Says that it would be seen on the counting day,” said Dhanopia. Congress said the election commission is working under pressure of BJP. EC had promised that verification would be held after each round of counting but no orders have been given to the collectors yet. Dhanopia said that if satisfactory redressal of the complaints was not done then Congress would go to court and sit on dharna at EC office.