Punjab Election Commission on Tuesday sought a report from the Jalandhar deputy commissioner on the reported photocopying of ballot papers by private individuals in the district.
"DC Shruti Singh has two days to submit her report," the commission's secretary, ML Sharma, said here. HT had carried the photograph of a private-company worker photocopying pink ballot papers at a centre on the Jalandhar-Hoshiarpur road where official printing of the ballot papers was on for Amritsar, Jalandhar, and Hoshiarpur districts.
Sharma said the matter was of not much concern, as every ballot paper would carry the counter-signatures of the presiding officer concerned. On the delay in printing and the polling parties dispatched without the ballot papers in many areas, he said the task remained unfinished for Hoshiarpur district alone and would be over on Tuesday itself.
"More than 1-lakh types of ballot papers are being printed, which is a huge task," he added. The commission on Tuesday countermanded election to seven more posts of panch (two each in Gurdaspur and Fatehgarh Sahib districts, and one each in Bathinda, Ferozepur and Ludhiana) for "coherent reasons such as the death of the candidate or confusion over ballot papers".