COUNTERVIEW: Ahmedabad: Monday,
January 23, 2017.
Mehulbhai
Rathod of Aniyali (Kasbati) of Botad district was one of the candidates for the
village panchayat elections, held in Gujarat in December last week. He claims
to have observed that some residents of his village had voted twice -- in
Anilyali as well as in the neighbouring Ranpur. He meticulously worked to
prepare a list of 14 such names, who allegedly voted at two different places.
Just as it
happens with every candidate, who would check the list and tickmark each name
after the vote is cast, Mehulbhai, too, did
the same. On getting suspicious that something has gone wrong, he got
the list checked from a candidate from Ranpur.
On the basis
of the information he has received, Mehulbhai believes, the village panchayat
elections were not free and fair. He says, Gujarat's State Election Commission
(SEC) has failed to give fair and clean elections to the voters, which is its
prime responsibility.
Mehulbhai is
one of the 20 complainants who have approached the Right to Information (RTI)
helpline (9924085000) run by Mahiti Adhikar Gujarat Pahel (MAGP) from
Surendrangar, Junagadh and Rajkot districts, contending that many people
couldn't find their names on the voters' list despite the fact that it was
there in the “search” results of the SEC's online list.
Mehulbhai, as
also many others, therefore, believe, this has impacted results of the
panchayat elections. Mehulbhai has another reason to be more perturbed than
others he lost the election just by 10 votes.
As soom as he
got the result, he filed an RTI with SEC's taluka and district election
officials to show him the list of voters at the polling station which should
conform with the list of people who had voted on the polling day.
However,
Mehulbhai regrets, he was denied information. Therefore, he has now lodged a
detailed complaint with the State Information Commission, Gujarat's RTI
watchdog. If that does not help, he underlines, he will approach the High
Court.
There is a
strong impression that the role of SEC has remained very weak in Gujarat, as
could be seen during the last urban local bodies, held in December 2015. There
were a large number of complaints to the effect that the names of voters had
disappeared at the last moment. Many voters were surprised to find their names
were canceled with red stamp marks.
Defending
what many believed was mass rigging (click HERE to read), SEC had said that the
final list had arrived at the last moment, hence it had no time to remove the
names from the voters' list. It therefore decided to cross out certain names
with red marks.
As per the
People's Representation Act, 1951, the voters' list should be uniform for local
self-government, state assembly and Lok Sabha elections. After Mehulbhai was
denied information, there is reason to believe that what happened with him and
others casts on SEC's autonomy. In fact, it gives credence to the view that SEC
has acted on instructions from the ruling politicians of Gujarat.
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