New Delhi, Mar 12: Intensifying their demand for action against officials allegedly involved in inclusion of "bogus" voters in Madhya Pradesh electoral roll, senior BJP leaders today met President A P J Abdul Kalam seeking his immediate intervention in the matter. After raising the issue through a calling attention motion in Lok Sabha, senior BJP leaders including Pramod Mahajan and Uma Bharati led a delegation of party MPs and MLAs from the state to Rashtrapati Bhawan to apprise the president of the Digvijay Singh ministry's "defiance" of the Election Commission directive.
The commission had last week recommended the state government to suspend ten officials, including three collectors, allegedly responsible for the "irregularities" in the voters' list in the state. Briefing reporters after the meeting, Bharati, who is the incharge of BJP's election campaign committee in Madhya Pradesh, said the main demand was immediate compliance of the EC directive against errant officials.
"Since the Commission is a constitutional body, states have to obey its orders. Otherwise, it will set a wrong precedent," she said, adding if the state refused to comply with the orders, "we will be forced to chart out our next course of action". She alleged in several assembly constituencies as many as 20,000 "fake" names had been added to the voters' list.
Shivraj Singh Chauhan, Prahlad Singh Patel, Kailash Joshi (all MPs) and Babulal Gaur, leader of the opposition in MP Assembly, were also present in the delegation.
Bureau Report