YSRC lodges complaint over bogus, duplicate and fake votes

Vijayawada: Former ministers and MLAs, Perni Venkataramaiah and Vellampalli Srinivas as also MLAs Malladi Vishnu and Kayle Anil and MLC Monditoka Arun have complained to the state Chief Election Officer (CEO) Mukesh Meena about irregularities in the voters list.

They explained to the CEO that there were duplicate votes in many places and “many voters with the combination of photo, name and voter ID.”

The YSRC wants to ensure that no person should have more than one vote, they told the CEO.

Later, they told the media at the AP secretariat that fake and bogus names of voters were included in the voters list during the previous Telugu Desam government’s period. Perni said vernacular media heads Ramoji Rao and Radha Krishna and Telugu Desam leaders have been making baseless accusations against the YSRC government on the voters list.

He said a BJP leader from Telangana state has joined the opposition camp and was spreading lies that 10,000 bogus voters were added in each constituency electoral list in AP.

There were 3,98,34,776 voters in January 2019 and it reduced to 3,97,96,678 by January 2023. If the votes were added, the total number should increase and not decrease, he pointed out.

Perni said they appealed to the CEO to rectify the irregularities in the voters list and made the same appeal in Delhi. The voter cards should be linked with Aadhar cards, he proposed.

He said that with a small change in name and address, 59 lakh bogus names of voters had been traced before 2019 elections by YSRC and a complaint was made to the Election Commission. Now, in 2023, with a change of name, address and photo, 40 lakh suspicious names were  identified, of which 16.59 lakh people have votes in both Telangana and AP.

“We asked the CEO to conduct a comprehensive investigation into all these and revise the voter list.

The YSRC leaders explained to the CEO that in some places there are 9242 houses but have only 20 to 30 votes. “For 2643 houses, there are 31 to 40 votes in some places; there are 200 to 500 votes in 96 houses; and likewise 500 to 1000 votes in 14 houses as per the 2019 voters list.”

He also said that with one door number, there were 500 votes in the 2019 voters list in Suryaraopet in Vijayawada. “The TD does all irregularities and puts the blame on the ruling YSRC government.”

The former minister said that the 2019 voters lists are still live and requested that these errors be corrected.