Vilas Muttemwar wants voters' issue resolved

NAGPUR: Even as the Bharatiya Janata Party's legal cell has filed a petition with the Chief Election Commission seeking urgent action in the case of deletions and depriving of voting right to 74 lakh eligible voters in Maharashtra, city MP and Congress leader Vilas Muttemwar has also sought resolution of the tangle amicably.

The BJP legal cell head Vinod Tiwari has alleged in the petition submitted to the CEC that a large number of people were denied their right to exercise franchise because their names did not figure in the voters' lists revised in the state before the Lok Sabha elections. State BJP spokesman and city campaign manager Girish Vyas said: "We have already taken up the Nagpur case where during voting on April 10, at least a lakh people could not exercise their right to vote. Several of them with voter slips issued by the officials were not allowed to vote as their names did not figure in the final electoral roll," said Vyas. He suspects that names were deliberately deleted under the influence of the ruling party in the state in order to get electoral advantage.

City BJP nominee and former president of the BJP Nitin Gadkari said: "This is grave injustice to the voters who were really charged up this time and were eager to cast vote like never before in the country's electoral history. We hope the local authorities take up the matter and redress the voters' grievance."

Muttemwar told Times Of India that he had met the district election officers on the April 12. "We were the first to raise protest. Deletion of names randomly without any physical verification could harm the Congress as well as other parties. The authorities concerned should look into the matter and find a way out. This time we are expecting more than 12 lakh voters to cast vote in the city seat. But it fell short by at least a lakh because of serious errors in the voter list," said Muttemwar who has sought action against officials responsible for the random deletions.