Kerala Opposition leader releases list of 4.34 lakh bogus voters, says more details to follow

Kerala Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala on Wednesday released the list of 4.34 lakh bogus voters, a day after the Election Commission told the high court that it had identified only 38,000 such voters.

Chennithala released the list later on Wednesday evening on the website operationtwins.com. The portal has detailed a list of voters whose names have allegedly been duplicated with the same photograph in the same constituency and those whose names have been duplicated in more than one constituency. The alleged duplicated names in all 140 Assembly constituencies have been released on the website.

Earlier, the Election Commission had conducted a prima facie examination into alleged discrepancies in the voters’ list for the Assembly election and it was ascertained that the same person had emerged in the list multiple times with different addresses. Such persons were found possessing multiple voters ID cards.

After releasing the list of bogus/duplicated voters, Chennithala said the list has been brought to the public domain. “The website would be updated with more details about bogus voters, including their photographs. Political leaders and the public should make use of this list to detect discrepancies in their respective booths. This is an effort to prevent bogus voting in the Assembly election. The public can also alert the Election Commission about bogus voters,” he said.

Chennithala said the Election Commission did not conduct a booth-level examination to identify bogus voters. However, it turns out that booth-level officers could not detect the duplication of voters’ names using the same photo in various booths. It is the ruling CPI (M) which wants to make use of these bogus voters and the Opposition cannot allow that, he said.

Considering the petition of the Opposition leader, seeking a crackdown on bogus voting, the Election Commission recently told the high court that the polling officer would get an affidavit from voters whose names have been duplicated in the list. The court had suggested deployment of central forces in booths to prevent bogus voting.