Thane: A bag filled with voter ID cards and PAN cards, most of them issued since 2015, was found abandoned near the Mumbra creek during a pre-Ganeshotsav clean-up drive. This discovery prompted Thane Congress to demand a thorough investigation, suspecting voter fraud in the elections since then.According to Congress spokesperson Rahul Pingale, the bag was discovered by a volunteer who immediately alerted local block President Nilesh Patil. Patil rushed to the spot, documented the discovery through photos and videos, and subsequently informed the local party leadership. Initial checks by the party activists revealed that the voter ID cards were issued since 2015, and most addresses belonged to Assembly constituency 149.The assembly constituency is presently represented by NCP-SP MLA Jitendra Awhad and is also part of the Kalyan Lok Sabha Constituency, which is represented by Shiv Sena MP Dr Shrikant Shinde.“Our party workers visited a few addresses listed on the voter IDs and found that no such individuals lived there for years, raising serious doubts about the authenticity of the documents. This is a direct attack on democracy. Our leader Rahul Gandhi has long raised concerns about fake voter registrations, but the Election Commission has failed to act. We want to know which documents were submitted for these IDs, through which centres they were registered, and whether they were used in past elections or not,” said Pingale through a press statement issued after he submitted the recovered cards to the election department.The Thane district deputy election official remained unavailable for comment.
