MLA Sangeet Som booked for slapping polling official in Uttar Pradesh

The Uttar Pradesh police have booked Bharatiya Janata Party  MLA from Sardhana, Sangeet Som, for allegedly thrashing the presiding officer at a polling booth as voting was underway during the first phase of the Assembly polls on Thursday.

Police said Som and his supporters stormed into Booth 131 at Salawa village in Meerut district around 3 PM on February 10 as he was upset over a long queue of voters outside. Inside the booth, they said, Som had a heated argument with the presiding officer over the alleged slow pace of voting before slapping him. The MLA’s supporters also took away the CCTV cameras installed inside the booth, the police added.

“We waited for the presiding officer, Ashwini Sharma, to file a complaint for nearly ten hours on Thursday, but he did not turn up, following which the FIR was registered against the legislator



by the incharge of the Sardhana police station, Lakshman Verma. We are investigating the case and action will be taken after completion of our inquiry,” Meerut Superintendent of Police (SSP) Prabhakar Chaudhary said on Saturday.

“We sent the copy of the FIR to the Election Commission the same day,” the SSP said, adding the police have still asked the presiding officer to record his statement “to bolster our case”.

Som, the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate from Sardhana, is seeking a third successive term as the legislator from the constituency.

The fresh FIR has taken the number of cases against Sangeet Som to eight, although he has yet to be convicted in any of them.

Som was also an accused in the Muzzafarnagar riots case of 2013 but was given a clean chit by a local court last year.