NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear the plea of presidents of Congress ’s state units in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh — Kamal Nath, Sachin Pilot and Bhupesh Baghel — seeking a direction to the Election Commission to take steps to ensure free and fair assembly polls by weeding out alleged duplicate and fake voters from the electoral list.

A bench of Justices A K Sikri and Ashok Bhushan issued notice to the EC and sought its response on the plea. As the three states are scheduled to go to polls by the year-end, the court decided to give an early hearing and posted the matter for August 31 to examine the issues flagged by Congress leaders.

Senior advocate A M Singhvi and lawyer Varun K Chopra, appearing for Nath and Pilot, said the voter list should be supplied in text mode and display time of paper trail in the electronic voting machines (EVM) should be increased. They also sought extension of time to submit forms for deletion and addition in the voter list by another 15 days as the deadline is August 21.

MP Pradesh Congress Committee chief Kamal Nath’s petition detailed inactions and omissions on the part of the EC and said these would “impede free, fair and unbiased upcoming assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh”. Admitting that “MP assembly polls are crucial in many ways to Congress”, Nath said, “EC is the watchdog of free and fair elections and is duty bound to circumvent pressure and ascertain that ensuing elections are free from any impediment in order to uphold the democratic sanctity and rights of the voter.” One of the major issues raised by Nath pertained to alleged duplicate and fake voters in the electoral list.

He said Congress had made a detailed presentation to the EC on June 3 highlighting 60 lakh “duplicate, repeat, multiple, illegal, invalid and false entries” in the electoral rolls for MP.

