Thiruvananthapuram: It may sound strange that Babu and Jose, non-Muslims, are staying in the same house as K P Sajida or Nalini and Bhaskaran, both Hindus, share a roof with Usman, in Kerala’s northern town of Kannur.
This sounds like the acme of religious amity. But the fact is that a no-holds-barred contest for the Assembly by-election in Kannur on November 7 has drawn droves of bogus voters from nearby constituencies to try and cast a vote for their favorite candidates.
Expelled CPM youth leader A P Abdulla Kutty is the Congress candidate in Kannur, taking on CPM State committee member M V Jayarajan.
Many bogus voters and their fraudulent residential certificates surfaced during the verification of the revised voter list.
Besides Kannur, by-elections are being held in Ernakulam and Alappuzha to fill up vacancies caused by incumbent legislators getting elected to the Lok Sabha.
K P Sajida, a bona fide voter, lives in House No 167 in Chirakkal panchayat. But Babu and Jose claimed in the application for vote enrolment that they resided in the above address.
Similarly, Usman found that there were two other claimants- Nalini and Bhaskaran- to House No. 137 where he lives with his family.
One Rupesh, who lives with his mother at Moolikode in Azheekal panchayat, found that his uncle, Raveendran, settled in Kalliassery, has “shifted to their residence” as per the new voter list. He complained to the election officials, who did not bother. Finally Rupesh approached the Election Commission and the uncle got transferred to his proper residence.
Congress alleges that 15 new voters, supposedly residing at a building associated with the CPM daily Deshabhimani in Pallikunnu panchayat, are bogus. The Village Officer had issued them a residential certificate, citing the building number 2/426. But the Pallikunnu panchayat secretary disclosed under the Right to Information law that no such number had been assigned.
District Collector V K Balakrishnan yesterday submitted a report to Chief Electoral Officer Nalini Netto, pointing out that many residential certificates submitted along with voter applications were bogus.
The Congress-led United Democratic Front has alleged that the CPM ensured the mass transfer of more than 10,000 voters from neighbouring constituencies to Kannur with the help of officials.
Out of the 130,000 voters in Kannur Assembly constituency, at least 8,000 voters were registered in the last four months as against 3,000 new voters in the preceding five years. Officials had rejected 6,000 applications for enrolment on the voter list in Kannur.
In the other two constituencies-Alappuzha and Ernakulam-the number of new voters was only about 5,000.
In Kannur the CPM is engaged in a do-or-die battle against the Congress candidate, A P Abdulla Kutty, the former MP, who was expelled from the party in March this year.
It was in 1957 that C Kannan of the CPI was elected from Kannur. Since then no Communist nominee had got elected there.
In the recent Lok Sabha election, Congress leader Sudhakaran had a majority of 23,000 votes in the Kannur Assembly segment.
Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, who hails from Kannur, said the voter list preparation was the work of Election Commission and not that of the state government officials. But he justified the transfer of voters, saying it was a normal process during voter list revision.
Former Federal Minister O Rajagopal (BJP) called for a thorough revision of the list to weed out bogus voters, urging the Election Commission to defer the by-election until the process was completed.
