THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Soon after confirming that there are double votes in most districts of the state, Chief Electoral Officer Teeka Ram Meena has launched a crackdown on officials responsible for alleged irregularities in the voters' list for assembly polls. The inspection was conducted on opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala's complaint.

Earlier, Chennithala had complained that there were around four lakh double votes, which would lead to widespread fraudulent votes. "As per the preliminary report of district collectors, we have found that many of the entries are double entry. In Kottayam, 1,600 cases were investigated, of which 590 double entries were found. In Thrissur, all 570 cases were confirmed to be that of double entry. In Palakkad 2,004 entries were verified and around 800 were seen as multiple entries," Meena said on Monday.

The Chief Electoral Officer ordered for a detailed inspection in 140 constituencies to identify and take action against those who are responsible for the discrepancies in the voters' list. As part of this, Assistant Electoral Registration Officer in Uduma was suspended after the cards in the name of Kumari, a 61-year-old voter, was found in the system. However, only one of these was issued to her and the other four were cancelled, he said.

Two steps to prevent fraudulent voting

The Election Code does not allow the removal of double votes even if they are found in the voter list. The Commission will take two steps to prevent fraudulent voting.

• The double vote list will be given to the BLOs. They will take evidence and the double votes in each constituency will be included in the Absentee, Shifted, and Duplicate or Dead (ASD) list. The list will be forwarded to the presiding officers to prevent fraudulent voting.
• Webcasting will be tightened in areas with more double voting. If the polling agent cannot be placed in the party villages, then arrangements will be made to bring one from any place in the constituency. The central forces will be deployed in more than five districts in the Malabar region where fraudulent voting is likely to take place.

The final voter list for the polls was updated and released yesterday. There are a total of 2,74,46,039 voters. The list, released in January, had 2,67,31,509 voters.

Possibilities of double vote

• If BLOs in new applications do not undergo physical verification due to COVID.
• Due to computer malfunction
• The software does not have an inbuilt system to prevent the same name and voter card number from reappearing
• When voters apply in non-specific forums for correction of the voters' list
• When voters deliberately apply in different constituencies