Kerala elections 2021: Congress alleges rampant fraud in voters' list in State

Thiruvananthapuram, Mar 17: The Opposition Congress on Wednesday raised serious allegations of fraud and irregularities in the preparation of voters' list in Kerala ahead of the April 6 assembly polls.

Citing the voters' list published by the Election Commission on January 20 2021, Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Ramesh Chennithala said bogus votes have been added extensively in each constituency across the state.

There were instances of the name of a person being included in the voters' list of the same constituency five or six times, he told reporters here in a press meet. "In most cases, same address and photo have been used for committing the fraud. In some other cases, minor changes have been made in the address and the photo," the senior Congress leader alleged.

Accusing the Election Commission of issuing multiple voter identity cards to the same person in the same constituency, Chennithala cited an example of a person named Kumari, a 61-year-old voter in Uduma segment in northern Kasaragod district, who had allegedly been given five identity cards.

To prove his point, the leader shared the serial numbers and voter identity card numbers of all the five cards issued to her. Noting that this was not an isolated incident, he said thousands of fake voters have been included in the same manner in each constituency, which is an "organised" attempt to sabotage the electoral process.

"It is a serious crime which would not be possible without the support of officials who were assigned to prepare voters' list. A clear conspiracy at the state level was behind the attempt to create bogus voters in all the 140 constituencies in the state," Chennithala said.

He also listed the number of bogus voters in seven constituencies including Kazhakkoottam, where state tourism minister Kadakampally Surendran was seeking a second term.

Chennithala sent a letter to Chief Electoral Officer urging him to scrutinize the voters's list in all the 140 constituencies and remove the names repeated. He also asked the Election Commission to hold the Assembly polls on April 6 only after removing the fraudulent voters from the list.