10 political parties urge ECI Observers to visit State and solve electoral errors
Source: Hueiyen News Service
Imphal, February 22 2012:
The 10 political parties of the state have expressed strong reservation over bogus voting and other malpractices in the recently held elections to the 10th Manipur State Legislative Assembly and urged the ECI to immediately depute Observers to the State and solve the prevailing crisis arising out of electoral malpractices.
This was decided in a meeting held at Hotel Imphal today.
The 10 political parties present in the meeting include NCP, MPP, CPI (M), CPI, JD-U, BJP, NPF, MSCP, NPP and Trinamool Congress.
The meeting which was convened at around 11 am discussed the issue of proxy voting, misuse of ballot papers and finally came up with three different resolutions.
The resolutions are, the ECI should declare the bogus votes as invalid, the ECI depute its observers to the state and come up with specific solutions with regard to the electoral errors and to declare the ballot papers which were misused as invalid and prepare a list and make available the same to all the candidates and political parties by February 25 .
Talking to media after the meetingat Hotel Imphal , Dr M Nara, Chairman of the meeting, said that the meeting was convened taking into consideration of cancelling visit of the Special Observers who were supposed to arrive today.
With the cancellation of their visit without giving any specific reasons whatsoever, the discussions which was to be held with the ECI observers on the issues of proxy voting, misuse of ballot papers and re-poll did not materialise.
The decisions taken at meeting of the 10 political parties today have been made known to the Chief Election Commissioner, Election Commission of India through a written format.
The same will also be submitted to Chief Electoral Officer, Manipur.
It is the stand of the 10 political parties that the Special Observers of ECI should visit the state at the earliest, he added.
Dr Nara further stated that the ECI is fully aware that there have been various cases of bogus voting in the recently held election.
And it will be considered as a total breach of the law of the land if the counting of votes is done without excluding the such votes.
There were also reports that a single person has voted 70 times.
It will be a mockery on the part of the ECI if it stays mum on these issues.
He went on to say that a decision on the current issue should be taken before the counting of votes begins.
If the ECI remedies all the errors in the recently held elections in the state, the 10th Manipur State Assembly Election will create history.