BJP exposes duplicate voters in Mumbai North LS constituency

New Delhi, Jun 11 (UNI) The Election Commission will undertake a field verification of voters in Mumbai North Lok Sabha constituency following complaints from the BJP that as many as 3,80,461 duplicate voters figured in the electoral rolls of the three Assembly segments of Borivli, Kandivli and Malad in the constituency.

The Election Commission gave this assurance to a four-member BJP delegation led by Mr Ram Naik, former Petroleum Minister and former Member of Parliament from Mumbai North constituency, which called on the Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalswami here this morning to bring to his notice the inconsistency in the voters list.

Talking to newspersons at the BJP Headquarters here, Mr Naik said the BJP had begun scrutinising the electoral rolls of 40 Assembly segments -- 34 in Mumbai and 6 in Thane Lok Sabha Constituency -- after it noticed that names of several voters were missing from the electoral rolls, while many had their names in duplicates in the last parliamentary election.

To begin with, ''we scrutinised electoral rolls of Borivli, Kandivli and Malad Assembly constituencies and found that out of total 18,02,877, 3,80,461, about 21 per cent were duplicate voters.

The Party then handed over the list of duplicate voters to the Chief Electoral Officer of Maharashtra on April 29,'' he said.

Mr Naik said the Party had requested the Election Commission to complete the field verification of voters before publishing the electoral rolls as per newly delimited constituencies.

He said the Election Commission has also agreed to accept the applications for enrolling as new voters who had recently moved into new housing complexes in cities provided they were presented "with appropriate letter of the office-bearers of the housing societies".

UNI KAS/MCN AKJ RP GC1805