Hundreds of voter identity cards were found dumped in the Kalamboli steelyard area on Thursday.
Though an attempt had apparently been made to burn the entire stack, a large quantity remained unaffected.
The Kalamboli police learnt about the dumped cards in the afternoon, after a news channel broke the story. Senior Police Inspector S.K. Dubbal rushed to the old bus depot of the steelyard to take stock of the situation.
The police found burning scrap at one end of the depot, which included a large number of voter ID cards, several still intact. Issued in 1995, the cards bore names of voters from Bihar and Gujarat. The police have no clue about how they got there.
Panvel Tehsildar D.L. Kedare, who visited the spot, said: “As of now, we cannot comment since these cards do not belong to our state. We will get in touch with our counterparts in Bihar and Gujarat to get details. We will also try to verify authenticity and source.”
Added Dubbal: “A total of 640 voter identity cards have been recovered intact. There are several others that were partly burnt or badly damaged and cannot be counted. We have also recovered some cards with photograph of women but men’s names. All the cards are from Bihar and Gujarat.”
{{/usCountry}}Added Dubbal: “A total of 640 voter identity cards have been recovered intact. There are several others that were partly burnt or badly damaged and cannot be counted. We have also recovered some cards with photograph of women but men’s names. All the cards are from Bihar and Gujarat.”
{{/usCountry}}Sources said that the government had outsourced the making and distributing of voter identity cards to private agencies. “It is likely that one of the distributors did not distribute them, probably as they were defective, and then tried to burn them here,” said a source.
There is a proper procedure to be followed for destruction of official records and obviously, in this case, it has not been followed, Dubbal added.
Email author: htmetro@hindustantimes.com