People's Democracy
(Weekly Organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
No. 16
April 21, 2013
|
Vol. XXXVII
No. 16 April 21, 2013 |
ON
April 16, Gopikant Bakshi, secretary of the Jharkhand state
committee of
Communist party of
Bakshi
said after the cash for vote scam during elections to two
Rajya Sabha seats from
Jharkhand in 2010-12, the cash for vote deal in the mayoral
election and the
extremely incredible discrepancy revealed in the conduct of
poll for 55 wards
of the Ranchi municipal corporation had further ashamed the
people of the
state.
One may
note that the print media has published reports about the
differences in number
of actual votes polled and the number of votes counted, and
the differences
between the reports of the presiding officers and election
officers regarding
the number of votes polled in different booths.
Elections
for 55 wards of the corporation were held on April 8, 2013.
Only on
the preceding day, i.e. on April 7, Rs 21.93 lakh were
recovered from a hotel in
After
the poll, the State Election Commission stopped counting of
votes for the mayoral
post and finally recommended that the governor cancel the
elections. This is perhaps
the only case in our country when a mayoral poll was
countermanded on charges
of corruption.
Out of the
55 wards, results of six were withheld as the EVMs meant for
these wards were changed
with the EVMs used for mayoral poll.
A peculiar
situation developed when the presiding officers of six wards
reported that votes
counted exceeded the votes polled.
Serious
discrepancies were revealed in all the wards barring 17. A
candidate in Ward No
2, Pradeep Mirdha, who is a member of the
