UP Congress alleges voter discrepancies were being corrected through Form-8

The party alleged the errors were the Commission’s responsibility and said voters received no acknowledgment slips in some cases.

The Uttar Pradesh Congress on Saturday submitted a letter to the Election Commission (EC), alleging that voters with discrepancies between their details and their EPIC were asked to fill Form-8 during a special voter campaign.

The party said since the discrepancy occurred after the final list under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process was released in April this year, it was the EC’s responsibility to rectify it.

“Under the special campaign, a vote jodo camp was organised at every booth for the new and left out voters in SIR. It is a matter of concern that during the said programme, at booth numbers 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233 and 411, 412, 413, 415 and many other booths under 127-Pilibhit Assembly Constituency, the BLOs, were making the voters with discrepancies in their voter list against the EPIC card, including change in name, fill up Form 8 brought by the BLOs themselves,” said the UP Congress in its letter to the EC.

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“These forms were pre-filled with correct details by the BLOs and the voters were called just to sign the form,” said Kumud Gangwar, the whistle blower in this case and former general secretary of the UP Congress.

“Since the discrepancy was done by Election Commission staff, the correction should have been done by them only. There was no need to take Form-8 from voters.

But this was being done in order to cover up the Election Commission’s well-planned conspiracy of vote theft and to save the said guilty officers and employees,” said Anas Khan, coordinator-cum-signatory dealing with Election Commission-related matters for the UP Congress.

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“Voters were asked only to sign/put a thumb impression and they are not even being given an acknowledgment slip. At the booths where it is being given, the date is not mentioned on the form. We are submitting related videos and copies of the form.

From the above incident, it appears that all the officers and employees of the Election Commission are blaming their entire mistake on the back dated Form-8 and they want to blame the voters by showing the receipt so that their officers and colleagues can be protected,” Khan said.

Recently, discrepancies were found in the voter details when checked against the EPIC of 13,150 voters in the 127-Pilibhit Sadar assembly constituency.

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When their EPIC numbers were entered online for verification, the voter list displayed the name of an unknown person, who was neither a voter in that area nor known to anyone.

Following this revelation, the Congress highlighted this issue, Anas Khan said.