New Delhi: Before Election Commission of India takes any call on Telengana polls, the Congress has alleged that there is around 70 lakh discrepancies in the voter list in Telangana. It said that any election held on flawed and inaccurate electoral rolls would be a fraud with the people of the country.

The party has also sought the Election Commission’s intervention in the “strongest possible manner”, Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said. The ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) in the state dissolved the Telangana assembly prematurely to swing elections in their favour by “manipulating” the voter list, he alleged.

Sources indicated that the Congress might move court to ensure that the alleged discrepancies and anomalies in the electoral rolls are corrected before any election is held in the state.

The Congress has already moved a petition in the Supreme Court on alleged discrepancies in electoral rolls in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, where polls are due this year-end.

Singhvi alleged that out of the total 70 lakh discrepancies, names of over 30 lakh voters were duplicated and 20 lakh deleted on the pretext that they have left for Andhra Pradesh. The same have not been added to the voter list of Andhra Pradesh, he claimed.

The Congress leader alleged that names of around 18 lakh voters were found in the electoral rolls of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.

Singhvi said the Congress has demanded that a thorough process of verification and sanitisation of the voter list be initiated before any elections are announced.

“Any election held on the basis of these deeply and deliberately flawed and inaccurate voter list would undermine the entire process and would lead to a distorted mandate. It would be a fraud on democracy and on the people of the country.