Though Congress candidate Manpreet Badal’s namesake has mentioned the phone number of Punjab deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal’s cousin in his affidavit, his new mobile number has appeared in the Election Commission records now.
Despite the fact that phone numbers of all other candidates mentioned in their affidavits are being used by the EC authorities, in case of Manpreet’s namesake the mobile number in use by the officials is not that as mentioned in the affidavit.
The other number mentioned by the candidate while checking of shadow registers points to the fact that there has been an attempt to avoid the use of mobile number shown in his affidavit.
District electoral officer (DEO) Kamal Kishore Yadav said the EC authorities are communicating with the candidates through written letters for the purpose of keeping a record of the same and not through mobile phones so it is immaterial that which cell phone number is mentioned in the list.
He said the Congress candidate’s namesake had mentioned the other number with the election officials while depositing his nomination papers so they are using the new number with 45086 as last digits.
{{/usCountry}}He said the Congress candidate’s namesake had mentioned the other number with the election officials while depositing his nomination papers so they are using the new number with 45086 as last digits.
{{/usCountry}}He, however, could not reply as to why the cell phone number mentioned in the affidavit was not being used. He said additional district electoral officer Rajeev Prashar, who was overseeing the management of organising meetings for inspection of shadow register of poll expenditure, could tell about this.
Prashar, when contacted, said probably the candidate has updated his contact number after filing nomination papers, which is being used by the administration at present.
The namesake had mentioned the mobile phone number of Pawanpreet Singh aka Bobby Badal, Sukhbir’s cousin, in the affidavit submitted with his nomination papers, which was indicative of the SAD tactic in fielding this namesake to divide votes of the Congress candidate.