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EC suspends two Pilibhit EROs over 10,470 irregular voter-roll entries; orders statewide review of UP rolls
The Election Commission has ordered the suspension of registration officers Mayank Goswami and Hemant Chaudhary after 10,470 irregular entries were found in the Pilibhit roll. An operator had entered 13,779 Form 8 applications with no forms on file. Operator logins are being deactivated across UP.
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The Election Commission has ordered the suspension of two electoral registration officers in Uttar Pradesh's Pilibhit Sadar constituency after irregularities were found in 10,470 voter-roll entries. The two officers, Mayank Goswami and Hemant Chaudhary, cannot be reinstated without the Commission's prior approval. The order was sent in a letter to the state's Chief Electoral Officer, Navdeep Rinwa, on 31 October.
What the inquiry found
A district-level inquiry found that a computer assistant at the Pilibhit voter registration centre had entered 13,779 Form 8 applications, which are used to change voter details, between 31 May and 29 August. Of these, 10,470 were approved and 3,309 were rejected. No application forms or supporting documents for the entries were found in the office.
The matter surfaced after the Congress alleged on 21 October that the names of more than 13,000 voters had been replaced with those of other people after the final rolls were published. The Samajwadi Party also alleged large-scale manipulation. On 22 October, Rinwa said legal action would be taken against current and former registration officers and that the computer assistant, Anil Kumar, would be removed.
Action ordered
Following the earlier FIR against the two officers and the operator, the Commission has now directed that Section 198 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, which deals with a public servant disobeying the law with intent to cause injury, be added against all three. The chargesheets are to be submitted to the Commission for scrutiny and the cases pursued rigorously in court. The district magistrate had said earlier that the FIR invoked Section 32 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950.
The two officers were removed from their posts on 22 October and attached to the district headquarters. The outsourcing firm that employed the operator has been told to end his services.
The Commission has ordered all district and registration officers in Uttar Pradesh to re-examine voter lists, with particular attention to entries made through Forms 6, 7 and 8, which cover additions, deletions and corrections. The state's Chief Electoral Officer has also directed that the login IDs of computer assistants on the Commission's ECINET portal be deactivated across the state. Around 806 computer operators work in these offices, two for each Assembly constituency.
Deadlines were set as well. The Pilibhit district election officer must report within a week after scrutinising the rolls of all four constituencies in the district, and an action-taken report on the operator and five assistant registration officers of the Pilibhit seat is due within three days.
The row comes during the second phase of the Special Intensive Revision in Uttar Pradesh, in which more than 2 crore names, or 13.2% of electors, were removed from the final rolls published on 10 April. The Supreme Court upheld the revision's legality in May but said the Commission cannot decide whether a person is an Indian citizen. In the 2022 Assembly election, the BJP's Sanjay Gangwar won Pilibhit Sadar by fewer than 7,000 votes. The Opposition has been protesting against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over the revision since early October.
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