Proxy voters to face legal action
Source: The Sangai Express
Imphal, March 25 2012:
The Chief Electoral Officer has reportedly been consulting legal experts to initiate punitive against those electorates who indulged in proxy voting during the recently held election to the 10th Manipur Legislative Assembly.
According to an informed source, opinions of legal experts are being sought by the office of the CEO so as to ensure that the guilty voters do not go unpunished when precision could be established on the identity of the proxy voters through minute examination of their photos.
Reminding that repoll had to be ordered in 67 polling stations after detecting widespread electoral malpractices, the source said the CEO is determined to purposefully put into work the historic voting mechanism adopted for the first time in Manipur.
Explaining that Manipur created a history of sort when the democratic exercise was conducted by clicking the pictures of the individual voters while casting votes, the source expressed confidence that by punishing the wrongdoers, sanctity of the electoral institution can be preserved.
While pointing out that compared to past elections, there had been significant cases of electoral malpractices, such as proxy voting when election was held in a single phase earlier in January, even though the voter turn-out was lower than before, the source revealed that process for punitive action is still in the initial stage.