The New Patriotic Party (NPP) parliamentary candidate for Wassa East Constituency of the Western Region, Wilson Arthur, has claimed that about 154 persons from the constituency, who did not register with the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) card, had been captured in the list of names to be deleted from the electoral register by the Electoral Commission (EC).
He has therefore threatened to drag the EC to court on behalf of the 154 electorate, if the electoral body goes ahead to delete their names.
The 154 are part of the total of 269 names listed by the EC as some of the people who registered with the NHIS card in the constituency, whose names the Supreme Court has ordered should be removed from the electoral register.
According to Mr Wilson Arthur, the 154 persons had insisted that they did not register with the NHIS card but their names had been captured in the list to be deleted.
He maintained that evidence from the NHIS database proved that the 154 did not indeed register with the card.
The NPP parliamentary candidate, who is also the Chief Executive Officer of Skyy Media Group in Takoradi, indicated that any damages that would eventually be granted by the court would be given to the affected registrants.
The Supreme Court Ruling
The Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the Electoral Commission to delete the names of 56,739 people the commission says registered for the 2012 elections with National Health Insurance card.
In its ruling, the court said other persons whose names were not submitted to it but had registered with such a card should also be deleted.
The court asked the commission to inform the affected persons before deleting their names from the register and then take immediate steps to re-register them.
The legal team of former People’s National Convention (PNC) organiser, Abu Ramadan, had questioned the accuracy of the list of 56,739 NHIS card registrants provided by the EC, arguing that the number was too low.
From Emmanuel Opoku, Takoradi