Chechen election committee to check authenticity of voters' signatures

The Chechen election committee has set up a working group to check the authenticity of voters' signatures collected to support candidates for the republic's president, the committee's chairman Abdul-Kerim Arsakhanov informed RIA Novosti on the phone.

The working group comprises the committee members, as well as graphologists and experts, he said.

Yesterday the republic's incumbent head Akhmad Kadyrov handed in lists with his voters' signatures. The election committee received 13,505 signatures from him, Arsakhanov said. "Under the law, we cannot accept signatures from him any more, though Kadyrov spoke of having 50 or 60 thousand signatures," the chairman explained.

The working group will choose 20 per cent of these signatures at random, and they will be checked by graphologists and experts, he emphasized. If 25 per cent out of them turns out to be defective, in compliance with the election law, the whole set of signatures will be considered invalid and the candidate will be taken off the presidential race. If everything is all right, the presidential candidate will receive the status of "a registered candidate and will be able to officially start his election campaign," Arsakhanov pointed out.