‘Duplicate voter-ID numbers’: Congress rejects ECI’s response, calls it ‘feeble and duplicitous’

New Delhi, March 7 (IANS) Amid a row over ‘duplicate’ voter identity card numbers, the Election Commission of India (ECI) said it would address the “decades-long” matter in the next three months. However, the Congress has rejected ECI’s response, calling it “feeble and duplicitous”.

The party has raised concerns over the integrity of the voter lists, which it claims are flawed and dubious.

“The Congress rejects this feeble and duplicitous explanation by the ECI and reiterates its demands to come clean on the sanctity of voter lists in India,” the grand old party’s Empowered Action Group of Leaders and Experts (EAGLE) said in a statement on Friday.

EAGLE was set by the Congress party to keep a “bird’s eye view” of elections in the country and “monitor the conduct of free and fair elections by the Election Commission of India”.

The panel includes Ajay Maken, Digvijaya Singh, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Praveen Chakravarty, Pawan Khera, Gurdeep Singh Sappal, Nitin Raut, and Vamshi Chand Reddy.

“The Election Commission of India (ECI) has issued a duplicitous response on the issue of same voter IDs being allotted to multiple voters. The ECI, in its response, hides behind its processes to offer a feeble explanation,” added the statement.

According to the statement, the ECI has been forced to admit that its voter lists are flawed and not trustworthy.

The EAGLE statement further explained that “the Election Commission, in a letter issued on September 18th, 2008, to Chief Electoral Officers of all States, had said that ‘voter-IDs are unique’. However, the ECI today says, the issue of duplicate voter-IDs is a “decades long issue”.

“Which statement of the ECI should the citizens of India believe? Why should an average Indian voter today trust the Election Commission?” the party questioned.

“How is it that 17 years later, ECI speaks of constituting a body to clean up this process of multiple voter-IDs? Was the ECI then all along misrepresenting to the voters of India that the ‘voter-IDs were unique’? If yes, then what are the other processes which ECI has been misrepresenting to its citizens?” the Congress questioned.

The Congress leaders said that the initial response of the Election Commission to these questions was to defend itself by stating that ‘this could happen only across states’.

“But there are instances with clear evidence of many voters with the same voter-ID in the same assembly constituency in the same state,” the party said, asking: “Is the ECI then lying? As the issue of duplicate voter-IDs clearly is not across different states, but rather in the same state and, in many cases, in the same constituencies.”

The party has asked why there has been a deafening silence on Leader of Opposition, Rahul Gandhi’s demand from Election Commission to provide a copy of the Maharashtra voter rolls.

“This only reaffirms what the Congress party has been asserting – voter lists under the current ECI are dubious and flawed,” said the Congress.

–IANS

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