Bogus voting controversy mars youth Congress poll in Pune

As part of the nationwide project to revive the youth wing of Indian National Congress, secret ballot-based voting was conducted to elect leaders in the city on Saturday but the process was marred by allegations of bogus voting.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has taken an initiative for galvanising the Youth Congress with a slogan ‘The Indian Youth Congress is undergoing a transformation!’ Open membership, internal elections, code of conduct, professional training, nationwide programme and performance management are the major aspects of the scheme.

The political party has formed an election commission like system for conducting the election. Voting was held on Saturday in the Congress Bhavan to elect state president, city president and assembly segment presidents in which booth level representatives voted.

Voting was conducted for assembly constituencies of Shivajinagar, Wadgaonsheri and Parvati. Amongst these, allegations were made about bogus voting by some persons in Shivajinagar and Wadgaonsheri constituencies.

Candidates for the post of city president Avinash Bagwe, Harshwardhan Mankar, Nilesh Borate and Vikas Landge filed a complaint with the Shivajinagar police station about voting on the basis of forged documents.

They have said in the complaint that during the election of Pune city Youth Congress Committee on Saturday, they had caught eight people who had forged documents used for identity proof.

They have handed over these representatives from Shivajinagar constituency to the police. They demanded that the police should conduct an inquiry about how they got the forged documents and who provided them, the documents.

Election officer Raghvendra Pratap Singh told DNA that he has maintained complete transparency in the election process and no  bogus voting happened.

He said that counting of votes would be done on Sunday afternoon and results would be declared for the posts of president of Pune Lok Sabha constituency and those for six assembly segments by evening.

Counting of votes for state president would be held in Aurangabad on September 20 and votes cast in city would be sent there.
There was heavy polling for the election. In Shivajinagar constituency, out of 478 voters, 418 voted. In Wadgaonsheri constituency, there was 100% voting by 51 voters.
In Parvati constituency, 97 out of 99 voters voted.

Voting would be conducted on Sunday for constituencies of Kothrud, Cantonment and Kasba by 3 pm. The votes would be counted afterwards.

For the post of city president of Youth Congress, there is a tussle between Avinash Bagwe and Sunny Nimhan. For the post of state president, there is a contest between Vishwajeet Kadam and Satyajeet Tambe.