The Mumbai Congress on Friday demanded a probe into an alleged 'fake voters' scam, urging the election authorities to investigate it to weed out bogus names from electoral rolls.

City Congress President Sanjay Nirupam led a delegation to Maharashtra Chief Electoral Officer Ashwani Kumar and urged him that the publication of the draft electoral rolls, expected on Jan 31, be postponed till all bogus names are deleted.

"This is a massive organized crime. From the draft rolls released in September 2018, we have detected thousands of bogus voters registered in different assembly segments making up the six Lok Sabha seats in Mumbai," Nirupam told mediapersons.

He pointed out to Kumar that since it would be impossible to detect and delete all the bogus voters' names before January 31 deadline, the CEO must postpone the publication of the draft electoral rolls after making the revisions.

Nirupam added that many genuine voters have complained that they are not getting their voter I-cards and expressed apprehensions they would forfeit the right to vote in the upcoming elections.

"The election department doesn't have the necessary setup required to identify bogus voters on a such a huge scale. Election officers must visit each constituency and weed out fake voters before publishing the draft electoral rolls," Nirupam said.

On Wednesday, the Congress claimed that around 9 lakh bogus voters may have sneaked into the city's electoral rolls, providing evidence for the charge.

It said thousands of allegedly bogus voters, totaling 9 lakh, were found in the electoral rolls of different assembly segments in the city, with a single person having multiple voter IDs for different election booths in the same constituency.

"In some cases, the same person is shown under two different names, with differing ages, residing at two separate addresses and linked to different voting booths within the same constituency," Nirupam said, displaying the relevant proofs.

However, the Maharashtra State Election Commission (M-SEC) officials said the work of preparing electoral rolls is dealt with solely by the Election Commission of India through respective district collectorates.

--IANS

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