PIONEER EDGE NEWS SERVICE/ Dehradun
Political slugfest has started on Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls between the ruling BJP and the opposition Congress even before the controversial drive of the Election Commission kicks in Uttarakhand. In a serious allegation, a senior State BJP leader and Dharampur MLA Vinod Chamoli said that the name of the Congress patriarch and former chief minister Harish Rawat figures in the voters’ list in two constituencies of the State. Subsequently, the State Congress president, Ganesh Godiyal dared Chamoli to prove his allegation with appropriate evidence.
Chamoli said that though Rawat was never seen in Dharampur-the constituency the BJP leader represents in the Assembly-his name figured in the constituency’s electoral rolls. “My political career spans over four decades and yet I have never seen Harish Rawat in Dharampur. It is thus clear that Rawat is eligible to cast vote from two constituencies-the one he is resident of and Dharampur. This is why SIR is required to cleanse the list of the duplicate voters,” Chamoli added.
To buttress his charge, he cited the booth and serial number. “Harish Rawat’s name figures in the voters list at booth number 74 at Majra and the serial number is 717,” he claimed. Responding to the allegation, Godiyal said that removing the names of those associated with and supporting the Congress and other opposition parties from the voters’ list is BJP’s malicious stratagem. “The saffron party is playing this game with the connivance of the pliable Election Commission,” he said. He also challenged the BJP leader to present concrete evidence in support of his allegation. In the same breath, he said that the Congress stands for deleting the names of the duplicate voters from the electoral rolls
