Surat: Two BJP councillors of the Vapi Municipal Corporation (VMC) have been booked by police following a court directive over allegations of forging documents to establish the eligibility of one of them to contest elections.The accused, Samsuddin Chaudhary and Sunita Tiwari, both councillors from Ward 3, were booked at Dungra police station under Sections 336(2), 336(3), 340(2) and 61(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS). Tiwari is the BJP’s whip in the VMC.The complaint was filed by Mohammad Imran Mirza, a scrap trader who unsuccessfully contested the recent VMC election from Ward 3 on a Congress ticket.According to the complaint, Chaudhary allegedly prepared a forged school-leaving certificate and used it to contest the 2015 Chhiri taluka panchayat election from Ward 2 in Vapi. Mirza alleged that the same documents were used again during the recent VMC election, in which Chaudhary was elected, thereby misleading election authorities.The complaint states that in the affidavit submitted for the 2015 taluka panchayat election, Chaudhary declared his age as 21 and claimed to have studied up to Class V at Hindi Vidhya Mandir at Rata in Vapi in 2007. However, Mirza alleged that Chaudhary had appeared for the Class X examination from St Xavier’s School, where his examination records listed his date of birth as Nov 13, 1998.Based on that date of birth, Mirza claimed Chaudhary was only 16 years and 11 months old at the time of the 2015 election and was therefore ineligible to contest. Despite this, he allegedly remained an elected representative for five years.The complaint further alleged that Chaudhary again relied on documents showing his age as 31 and his educational qualification as Class V while contesting the recent VMC election. Mirza also alleged that Tiwari, who runs Hindi Vidhya Mandir, assisted him in preparing or using the documents.“I submitted a complaint with supporting evidence to the election authorities during the scrutiny of nomination forms for the recent municipal elections, but no action was taken. I then approached the police, but nothing happened. Finally, I moved the court, which directed the police to investigate,” Mirza told TOI.
