Cong alleges bogus voting; BJP rejects claims

Panchkula: Congress on Sunday alleged bogus and double voting at several polling booths during the MC elections, while the BJP dismissed the charges and claimed it was headed for a clean sweep.Congress mayoral candidate Sudha Bhardwaj alleged that irregularities were reported from multiple areas. "There was bogus voting in some areas. In Sector 4, around 20 to 25 persons were allowed to enter after 6pm. In one booth, a woman who came to exercise her franchise found that her vote had already been cast. I reached the spot and raised the issue, but nothing was done. They are doing whatever they can to win the polls," she alleged.Congress candidate from ward number 5, Vijay Kumar Sharma, also claimed to have come across such instances. "At a govt primary school in Sector 15, a man cast his vote. After about half an hour, the same BJP worker came again and voted. When we raised the issue, officials present asked us not to make an issue out of one vote, saying they could lose their jobs," Sharma alleged. He claimed that at a govt senior secondary school in Sector 15, a man was told that his vote had already been cast. "Who knows how many votes have been cast in this manner," he said.BJP district president Ajay Mittal rejected the claims. "We have not heard of any such issue. There could be one or two instances due to some technical error. The Congress has sensed its defeat as the BJP is going to win all the 20 wards," Mittal said.During the campaign, the Congress submitted a memorandum on May 6 alleging that 17,086 voter entries in the Panchkula Municipal Corporation electoral rolls were duplicate or identical. However, Haryana state election commissioner Devinder Kalyan later said that a list of only 8,543 voters had been submitted and the deputy commissioner was asked to re-verify it. The commission also stated that objections were not filed within the prescribed time, and the current status of the verification process was not known.