Congress candidate and prominent advocate Hafiz Rashid Ahmed Choudhury said on Monday that he will be moving the Gauhati High Court seeking a repoll in Karimganj constituency in south Assam owing to “large-scale rigging” on polling day and the “mismatch” between the votes polled and the total votes counted.

The Karimganj seat had seen a rough battle between Choudhury and sitting BJP MP Kripanath Mallah with the latter coming up trumps by 18,360 votes. Choudhury polled 5,26,733 to Mallah’s 5,45,093.

On Sunday, Choudhury in a three-page petition to the Karimganj Returning Officer (RO) alleged anomalies during the election and in the counting process.

In the petition, he claimed to have pointed out the mismatch of the votes to the RO. Though the RO assured to look into the matter, nothing was done till Sunday.

“... On the other hand, you (RO) hurriedly issued the winning certificate to the BJP candidate which proves that you were all along in collusion with the BJP to favour their candidates,” Choudhury’s petition stated.

Choudhury told The Telegraph on Monday that he was getting his papers ready before filing the election petition in the court. “It (election petition) has to be filed within 45 days. I am seeking repoll because there was large-scale rigging on April 26 (polling day) and there is a mismatch of 3,811 votes between the votes polled (11,36,538) and the counted EVM votes (11,40,349),” he said.

The senior advocate said he had lodged 19 petitions with the Election Commission seeking repolls in 32 polling stations due to alleged large-scale rigging and mismatched votes. “I have sought repolling in the constituency... there has been no action to address the issues,” he said.

Assam’s chief electoral officer Anurag Goel had on June 8 sought a report from the returning officer of the Karimganj seat on the discrepancy flagged by Choudhury. He is yet to know the RO’s findings.