The Election Commission disqualified two local government candidates from Dragteng Gewog in Trongsa for committing an electoral offence in postal ballot registration. The commission said the gup candidate from Khatoe chiwog and the Tshogpa candidate from Khamaed chiwog colluded with two other supporters and registered 116 people for postal ballots. As per the commission, the 116 individuals were not given postal ballots following the issue but they can still go to polling stations to vote. The two supporters were also fined. Now the gewog has three gup candidates.
“So some four people colluded and then they have registered postal ballots of the voters. So fortunately our system could detect it before we could send the postal ballots. As soon as we detected, then we did not send postal ballots to these people and then we have investigated. So when we investigate, we have found out that two candidates and two supporters colluded and some people collected their citizenship ID card, date of birth and given to these two people and they have registered the voters online. OTP has to go to the individual’s mobile number. They have even collected the OTPs and given them to these two people,” said Phub Dorji, the Director at the ECB.
Samten Dolkar
Edited by Tandin Phuntsho
