Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Teeka Ram Meena said that a preliminary investigation had established bogus voting by three women in booth no 19 of Kasaragod Lok Sabha constituency. An instance of suspicious “assisted voting” is also under the scanner of the state election commission.
The CEO has directed the police to slap cases on the three women, polling agents of political parties and polling officials for impersonification, abetment of bogus voting and dereliction of duty. However, a decision on repoll in the booth will have to be taken by the Central Election Commission. Besides the report we had sent, the EC will also consider the reports of the general and micro election observers before taking a final call," the CEO said.
Though the CPM had argued that the bogus votes were in truth “open votes”, as in someone voting openly for a voter who is unable to come to the booth, the CEO said that there was no such thing called “open vote” in election rules.
Two of the women who were found voting in Booth 19 – Saleena M V and Sumayya K P – were not listed as voters in the booth. Saleena was a voter in the nearby Booth 17, and Sumayya was listed in Booth 24. Saleena was in Booth 19 in her capacity as a panchayat member (she is CPM's Cheruthazhom panchayat member). And Sumayya, the initial enquiry found, had functioned as a relieving agent in Booth 19; a relieving agent is someone who steps in when a party's polling agent has to leave the booth for any reason. All the three booths, however, were in the same Pilathara UP School building.
The third woman, Padmini, was a voter in Booth 19. But the webcast visuals of the commission showed that she voted twice, at 5.20 pm and 5.47 pm. Sumayya and Padmini are former panchayat members of CPM. Saleena N P, who is a serving panchayat member, has been asked to step down from her post and subject herself to a detailed enquiry.
The CEO said that it was still not sure whether Sumayya and Saleena had voted in their original booths. “The EVMs are now kept locked in the strong room. We need the election commission's sanction to open them,” Meena said. He hinted that the state commission may ask for permission to open the strong room in the course of the investigation. Meena added that the webcast visuals from the booths will be examined.
Those who cast the bogus votes will be charged with section 171 C, D& F of the Indian Penal Code. It's punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to one year, or with fine, or with both.
There was confusion about the propriety of another vote in the same booth. It was an assisted vote. A doctor who was paralysed had come with a companion in a white shirt to the booth. The companion, identified as Raghunath, went inside the booth and talked to the presiding officer. The officer then came out of the booth carrying the necessary documents. “This was wrong on the part of the officer. He is not allowed to go outside the booth and take the signature or thumb impression of the voter,” Meena said. “The doctor should have been taken inside the booth using a wheel chair,” he added.
Stranger still, it was not the white-shirted companion Raghunath who voted for the doctor. Instead it was a red-shirted man who voted for the doctor.
The CEO said that a police case would be slapped on the polling agent of LDF candidate Satheesh Chandran for abetting bogus voting. He pulled up the polling agent of the Congress, too. “The presiding officer said the Congress polling agent left the polling station by 11 am,” Meena said. “If he was threatened, as he later claimed, he should have given a written complaint earlier,” he added. The CEO said it was the duty of the polling agent to identify the voters and alert the presiding officer to the presence of any bogus voter.
Since Saturday, after TV channels started airing visuals of the bogus voting "caught on camera" in the Kasaragod Lok Sabha constituency, the Congress took up the issue before Meena.
On Sunday, Meena asked for a detailed report from the district collectors of Kannur and Kasaragod where these incidents were reported. Kerala voted on April 23 for all 20 Lok Sabha seats.
The district collectors met officials attached to the polling booths where the incidents were reported and sought their version. The CPM's Kannur district secretary M V Jayarajan late on Saturday explained that its workers had only done "open voting".
However, Congress candidate from Kasaragod Lok Sabha constituency Rajmohan Unnithan told the media on Monday that there was no such thing called "open voting".
"What's there in law is companion voting. But in these visuals, all these people were voting themselves. Under law, if a person is unable to cast his vote, one can have a companion in the polling booth," said Unnithan, adding that Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan should speak up.
After Meena's confirmation, State Industries Minister E P Jayarajan, often referred to as the number two in the Pinarayi cabinet, said nothing of that sort has happened and what happened was companion voting and not bogus voting.
"These women's names are being dragged by the media and they will take legal action against these TV reports," said Jayarajan.
