Hyderabad: Voters lamenting that their names were missing from the electoral rolls was again a common sight across many polling stations in the city.
Several people who had voted in the last election found their names missing from the voters’ list for no apparent reason.
V. Ramesh, an APSRTC employee in Khairatabad constituency said, “I was out of town for a brief period and now my name is not there.”
Engineering student Meghna wrote to this newspaper claiming, “I was unable to vote because of the sheer negligence of the government officers. Polling stations don’t have the list of newly registered voters.”
Even IAS officer T. Radha found his name dropped from the list. Several people tried calling the toll free number of the Chief Electoral Officer, but it was unreachable. Some 300 voters from Pedda Bazaar, Chinna Bazaar and Veerabhadraiahnagar could not vote as their names were not there on the list, though they have cards.
M. Narsingh, who works at the State Human Rights Commission, said, “My wife’s name is registered in the list and she received her EPIC, whereas I did not. I even verified my name on the last day of registration. We were told our names would be in a new list. But we could not vote.” Complaints of bogus votes were also received from many booths. A micro observer said that these fake votes can be challenged by the voters, though in general voters do not opt for that.
Meanwhile, in certain booths, the polling process was delayed by hours due to technical snags in the EVMs.
EVMs at Ram Nagar, Sainikpuri, Keesara as well as Kapra were not working for more than an hour and a lot of people had to wait in the queue.
At Mehdipatnam, the Gupta family had come to the poll booth early in the morning to cast votes as they had to leave for Delhi in the afternoon. However, the EVMs stopped working. After waiting for a long time, the younger members of the family returned home for last-minute packing. An elderly family member stayed in the line. The youngsters only returned when the EVMs had started working again before the left to catch their train.
Amoga Laxmi, a first-time voter who reached the polling booth at Ram Nagar by 7 am had to wait for 55 minutes as the machine did not start and had to be replaced.
AP Chief Electoral Officer Bhanwar Lal said, “The EVMs used this time are sensitive. Even a slight jerk can lead to them getting automatically locked to prevent vote tampering. Since, these machines were transported in vehicles, perhaps they got locked inadvertently.”
