Non-local students plenty on city’s electoral roll
Election Commission can’t do anything now, says it is too late
Hyderabad: Despite the Election Commission’s claims that it is rigorously working on weeding out duplicate and bogus voters, cases of bogus voters continue to surface as voting day approaches.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) says it cannot do much to prevent duplication of voters as the complaints are pouring in at the last moment.
“Several complaints of duplication of voters and also of bogus voters are coming in but at the last moment. We cannot do much about it. Even in the case of bogus voters, verification at the last moment is not possible. In such cases, we are asking the respective returning officers to check the authenticity of voters,” said a senior official in the ECI office on condition of anonymity.
The Election Commission has received complaints about hundreds of bogus voters in Jamia Nizamia, a 134-year-old Islamic university in the old city that comes under the Charminar Assembly constituency-66.
Some 603 students are on the electoral rolls generated in 2014. Most of them are not locals but have come from Karnataka, Rayalaseema and Andhra region and even from other countries, to pursue Islamic studies.
ECI officials confirm that they have received complaints about bogus voters from Jamia Nizamia. “There is a provision where a student can cast his vote right at the place where he is studying, but he needs to cancel his name in his native region and give a declaration to the University head,” said the ECI official. Asked if they verified the declaration, the official said, “How can we do such verification?”
There are also complaints that voters of one Assembly constituency figure in the voters’ list of another constituency as well. “There are several duplications in Bahadurpura (69) and Charminar (66) Assembly constituencies. We filed a complaint in this regard with ECI,” said Basith, a local leader of the old city.
Hyderabad district election officer and GHMC commissioner Somesh Kumar said, “We did receive several complaints of duplication of voters in the electoral rolls and we made a report. However, we cannot do much about it. We are going to send a report to ECI on Wednesday.”