Congress leaders and members of the party's legal cell have pointed to huge discrepancies in the process of filing of nomination papers for the December 21 Jalandhar MC elections, the process for which started on Monday.

DCC chief Rajinder Beri and general secretary of the party's legal wing Parminder Vig said the biggest anomaly was that the State Election Commission had not appointed even a single PCS officer as the Returning Officer for receiving papers unlike previous years. They said, "Tehsildars, Deputy Excise and Taxation Officer or Estate Officers of PUDA have served as ROs in the MC polls till the previous election but not this time. We have an apprehension that the PCS officials have been spared to be used later to the advantage of the ruling Aam Aadmi Party in the state".

Beri and Vig said a majority of the ROs attached in Jalandhar were engineers with various departments, including the Jalandhar Improvement Trust, Punjab Pollution Control Board, Bist Doab Canal, Public Health (Jalandhar Development Authority), Water Supply and Sanitation and District Town Planning. The only non-engineer in the ROs list from Jalandhar is Deputy Registrar of Cooperative Society. They said the location of the offices where these officials would accept the nomination papers had not been put out anywhere for the convenience of hundreds of candidates.

Both alleged that the process of filing of nomination papers was going on in the most unprofessional manner. A legal expert for election work Vig said, "None of the ROs today had a copy of nomination forms or the checklist of the documents to be attached with the papers for submission of claim to contest the elections. There remained a confusion the whole day regarding some NOC from the building branch to be attached with the papers. No such provision could be seen in the checklist available online on the SEC portal for the purpose".

Vig further stated that even the revised voter lists had not been put up till this evening. "Hence majority of the candidates who have to attach a copy of it were not able to file their nomination papers on the first day. This led to a day going waste", he said.