Addressing the media in Mumbai, Patil said, "The electoral setback for the BJP in last month's six council seats was due to massive manipulation methods adopted by Congress, NCP. It will be contested before the EC. We will file the petition in the EC before January 18."
STATE BJP president Chandrakant Patil on Wednesday announced the party will file a petition before the Election Commission against “rampant malpractices” in last month’s council polls for graduate and teacher constituencies in Maharashtra.
Addressing the media in Mumbai, Patil said, “The electoral setback for the BJP in last month’s six council seats was due to massive manipulation methods adopted by Congress, NCP. It will be contested before the EC. We will file the petition in the EC before January 18.”
At the ongoing two-day meet, which concluded on Wednesday, the core committee reviewed the party’s poll performance. Patil said, “We hired an agency to study the results and voting trends to find out our cause of defeat.” He claimed that the study exposed massive malpractices. For example, he said, out of 900 polling booths, 300 recorded excess voting in the last one hour in Pune. He also said in some Pimpri-Chinchwad area with 12,000 voters, the venue was changed at the eleventh hour leaving voters confused. He said another shocking instance was the enrolment of large number of non-graduates as voters.
According to norms, a voter is eligible to exercise a ballot for graduate constituency only if she is a graduate.
The state legislative council polls for six seats — three graduate constituencies in Nagpur, Pune and Aurangabad, two teacher constituencies in Pune and Amravati, and one local body in Dhule-Nandurbar, took place on December 1. The counting was held on December 3 and results declared on December 4.
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