Maharashtra assembly polls: Duplicate voter IDs for 5.5 lakh people

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Pune: With Maharashtra Assembly polls in the next month, the Kolhapur and Sangli districts administration have decided to distribute duplicate voter ID cards to nearly 5.5 lakh people whose documents were damaged or lost during floods last month.

In Kolhapur, over 340 villages were fully or partially affected by the unprecedented deluge after heavy rains of these 27 villages in Shirol, Hatkanangale and Karvir tehsils were damaged the most.
Kolhapur Collector Daulat Desai said, "Since the state Assembly polls are now approaching, we have decided to distribute duplicate voter identification cards to voters in these 27 villages. Over 1.5 lakh duplicate voter ID cards have been printed for distribution among these villages."

In Sangli, over two lakh duplicate voter IDs have been distributed by the authorities to people from Shirala, Walwa, Palus and Miraj tehsils, which were severely affected by floods. An official from Sangli district administration said, "Assuming that people living in these flood-ravaged areas might have misplaced their important documents, we had sought over four lakh duplicate voter IDs. So far, we have received over 3.8 lakh duplicate voter IDs and more than two lakh of these have been distributed among people."

Desai has appealed to the people in Kolhapur to approach local authorities and seek duplicate voter ID cards if they have lost them during floods. Elections for 288 Assembly seats in the state will be held in a single phase on October 21 and the counting of votes will be done on October 24.

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