343 voter ID cards with Indore addresses found on Narmada bank at Mandleshwar; Congress seeks FIR

The cards carry addresses in the Tilak Nagar area of Indore, including Aastha Palace, Akash Nagar and Shraddhapuri. Preliminary information, according to local reports, suggests that the voters belong to the Rau assembly segment of Indore district, but the reports that name the area describe it as early information and not a finding. No names of voters have been made public, and it is not yet clear whether the cards are originals or copies.

The Sub-Divisional Police Officer, Shweta Shukla, confirmed that the cards were found during the cleanliness drive. She said that the cards carried Indore addresses, that information was being sought from the election office concerned and from the Indore administration, and that the in-charge of the local police station had been told to investigate. The Mandleshwar police in-charge, Pankaj Tiwari, said any further legal action would depend on what the investigation finds. Police and the administration are trying to find out whether the cards ended up on the riverbank through negligence or in some other way.

Some reports have raised a technical question. They noted that cards bearing the year 2016 appear in a digital format, whereas electronic voter cards were brought in only in 2021, and said that the dates and format of the cards still need to be examined. That is a question for the investigation and has not been answered. No response from the Election Commission has been reported so far, and no FIR has been registered.

The Congress reaction

Local Congress leaders, led by Khargone district president Ravi Naik, went to the Mandleshwar police station with the cards, and held a sit-in at the gate. They demanded an FIR against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, an impartial probe into how cards from another district came to be found together, and a search of the river by divers for more cards. Naik said the find pointed to vote theft, and warned that the party would surround the police station if no FIR was registered. The Congress ended its protest after giving the police a written application. Vijaylaxmi Sadho, a former state minister, shared the video and called for an investigation.

The party's charge is political, and it has not been tested. The party has been campaigning on what it calls vote chori in connection with the revision of the electoral rolls, and it is planning a rally in Delhi on 1 November.

Voter cards are printed and delivered to voters by the election machinery, and cards that cannot be delivered are normally returned to the electoral registration office, so a large bundle from one part of a city should have a paper trail that officials can follow.

The police will need to answer a handful of plain questions. Who had the cards, and how did 343 cards for one part of Indore end up together in another district? Are they genuine cards, are they duplicates, and do the voters named on them still appear on the rolls? Were they discarded, lost in transit, or thrown away deliberately? The election office in Indore can compare the card numbers with the roll in a short time, and the result would show whether the cards belong to living voters who are still registered or to entries that had been removed.

Until that comparison is made public, the find is a puzzle and not proof of anything. A bundle of cards in a river is unusual, and it deserves an explanation, but the explanation could be as simple as a careless dumping of old cards.