HC asks EC to look into complaints of discrepancies in

The Allahabad High Court today asked the Election Commission to look into complaints of discrepancies in the electoral roll for Ghaziabad assembly constituency, rejecting the poll panel's contention that this would not be possible once poll notifications are issued next week.
A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice D B Bhosale and Justice Yashwant Verma passed the order on the PIL of Ghaziabad resident Ajay Rajput, who alleged that the electoral roll for his assembly segment contained a large number of "fake or duplicate names".
The petitioner's counsel Anoop Trivedi and Saksham Srivastava also submitted that the EC's attention had earlier been drawn towards the issue by means of a representation by the petitioner containing details of nearly 20,000 fake or duplicate voters.

In the representation it was also pointed out that there were discrepancies like more than 250 people having been shown as residents of the same house but the EC failed to take any action on any of the glaring anomalies.
A preliminary objection was raised by the EC which argued that the PIL was not maintainable since notifications for the first phase of assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, in which Ghaziabad goes to polls, will be issued on January 17 and no changes in voters' list could be made thereafter as per law.
However, the court rejected the EC's contention pointing out that deletions or any other changes could be effected in the voters' list until the last day for filing of nomination papers by candidates which happened to be January 24 for the first phase of voting.

The court disposed of the PIL with a direction to the EC to take necessary action on the complaints.