IMPHAL, June 3: Tamenglong Autonomous District Council sitting chairman K Humaliabou has appealed to the Chief Electoral Officer to call all the presiding officers of the June 1 ADC election and questioned them `personally`™ to get the original report of the extent of gun power exercised by UG groups who intervened and disturbed the voting process during the election.
`The field reports collected by the presiding officers, ROs, POs will not give any clear account because all the reports have been forcibly manipulated by the armed groups to declare the election process peaceful,` he told media persons during a press meet at the Autonomous District Council office at Khuman Lampak today.
Humaliabou also appealed to the concerned authorities to invalidate the voting process at 3/1 Kongphung and 3/7 Piulong polling stations under Tamei sub-division as cadres of an armed outfit had started forcible proxy voting in these polling stations during the midnight of June 31, before the actual voting was to be conducted on June 1.
He further charged that the incident is unfortunate, because `Konphung, which is under Tamei sub-division, is a Congress dominated area, however, due to the forceful intervention of the armed UG group, the NPF, which has a weak base in the area, will turn out to be dominant during vote counting.`
He said that it has also come to light that the UG group even escorted the ballot boxes of 3/7 Piulong till the SDO office at Tamei.
He further claimed that out of seven polling stations in the constituency, there was no polling in one, voting was peaceful in only two polling stations while, UG cadres had captured the four remaining polling stations.
The UG group was fully and openly supporting the NPF candidate, he alleged.
Even after the end of polling, the UG cadres continued to search for Congress workers and agents, he added.
The NPF`™s claimed that the Congress party had disturbed the election process is a totally baseless allegation as the NPF had managed to capture the maximum numbers of polling stations with the help of armed militants, he continued.
There was no free and fair election in the area, he said claiming that the votes were taken and forcibly casted by the UG cadres on gun-point.
He said this is unfortunate.