Army in focus
There have been lot of interesting developments in the Ladakh region and now army has come into focus as the district election officer, wrote a letter to the GOC 14 asking him to check the allegations about how officers have been intimidating the jawans on the voting preferences. It has created a huge controversy and finally army has said that they probed the matter and have found the allegations as baseless. But the controversy is refusing to die in Ladakh region.
It all started with startling allegation has emerged from the election administration in Ladakh about malpractices in voting by soldiers. Deputy Commissioner of Leh, who is also the district election officer, has written to the army corps commander in Leh. It is alleged that there are malpractices on part of various commanding officers of the Indian Army in the electronic postal ballot system. It is alleged that the commanding officers are telephonically asking jawans for their voting preference rather than supplying to them the ballot paper for casting his vote, she has written to the army commander.
Even more worrying, if a commanding officer is stamping ballot papers, with no way for the voting soldier to check it, there is the possibility that his vote could have been diverted to a candidate preferred by the individual stamping their ballot paper. It has also been addressed to the commanding officer of the Ladakh Scouts Regimental Centre, which would indicate that locally recruited soldiers from the Ladakh Scouts were allegedly deprived of their voting rights.
Now the army has come with the statement in response to these allegations and has said that they have found all such allegations as baseless and there has been no instance available with them to prove that such behavior has been of the officers with their jawans on ground regarding their voting preferences.