New Delhi: Days before counting of Madhya Pradesh Assembly election votes, Balaghat Returning Officer Gopal Soni on Thursday (November 30) joined the list of suspended officers in a ballot tampering incident reported from the district.
The Election Commission (EC) suspended Sub Divisional Magistrate (SDM) Soni over his alleged role in the incident in which Chief Electoral Officer Anupam Rajan had suspended postal ballot nodal officer, Tehsildar Himmat Singh Bhavedi, recently, the Statesman reported.
The EC was acting on a complaint by a Congress delegation after which the poll panel had directed the Jabalpur division commissioner to conduct an inquiry. Balaghat District Collector Girish Mishra suspended Soni following the inquiry.
According to a video posted by Madhya Pradesh Congress chief Kamal Nath on X, some people were seen opening postal ballot boxes and rearranging the ballot papers stored inside them. The video later went viral.
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Balaghat’s district administration claimed that the postal ballots were only being sorted and arranged assembly constituency-wise. Soni had assured that no tampering whatsoever was done with the postal ballots, the Statesman reported.
The district administration had termed the incident as a “procedural lapse”, an Indian Express report said.
Balaghat collector Girish Mishra had issued a statement saying the strong room, created in the local tehsil office, was opened in the presence of authorised polling agents of political parties to segregate the incoming postal ballots.
While explaining the due process, he said the ballots coming in through the Electronically Transmitted Postal Ballot System (ETBPS) from various districts were segregated assembly-wise at 3 pm every day after opening the strong room.
Mishra on Tuesday told reporters that it was a procedural mistake as the strongroom was opened before the scheduled time and date. He also claimed that he was unaware that the strongroom had been opened for sorting the ballot papers, the Indian Express report said.
The results of the Madhya Pradesh Assembly polls will be out on December 3.