Revise Shimla civic body electoral rolls: Mayor

Shimla, April 14 (IANS) Shimla's Mayor and Deputy Mayor on Friday slammed the State Election Commission for "ineptness" in preparing the voters' list of the Shimla Municipal Corporation, the oldest in the country after Chennai and Kolkata, and demanded it be urgently rectified.

Both leaders of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) said there is chaos and a mess up in the list where the names of a large section of residents are missing.

"The city population is crossing 200,000 and by any estimate the total number of voters should cross 120,000. However, only 63,000 voters have been shown in the voter's list. This shows 50 percent of the genuine people have been deliberately kept out," Mayor Sanjay Chauhan and Deputy Mayor Tikender Panwar said in a statement.

The duo, who are the first and probably the last Communist mayors of the civic body which is likely to go to the polls next month, demanded complete door-to-door revision of electoral rolls according to the Election Commission of India procedure and withdrawal of the present notification of electoral process.

Chauhan and Panwar came to power in May 2012 through the first-ever direct elections for the two top posts in the corporation that had been ruled by the Congress for 26 years in a row.

Now the direct polls have been stopped by the present Congress government.

The 25-member house currently has 10 Congress, 12 BJP and three CPI-M councillors. From the next elections, the top two posts will be filled by the elected councillors.

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