EC finds procedure not followed in deletion of 2,912 votes

Anantapur: Election Commission has inquired into the deletion of 6,158 votes across five mandals of Uravakonda assembly segment. It has arrived at the conclusion that 2,912 of these votes have been deleted without following the prescribed procedure.

The ECI has suspended Anantapur zilla parishad CEO Shobha Swaroopa Rani for deleting 1,716 votes out of enquired 4,081 cases without following the procedure. Likewise, Anantapur ZP CEO Bhaskar Reddy has been suspended for 1,196 deletions out of enquired 2,077 cases.

Election Commission had received a complaint by Uravakonda MLA Payyavula Keshav with two lists of 10,069 electors, whose names had been deleted as expired / shifted / duplicate from year 2020 to November 2021 without following due procedure. The commission directed Anantapur collector to enquire into the complaint, verify all the deletion cases and furnish a detailed report. It also instructed that names of officers responsible for incorrect deletion be furnished to the ECI along with the action taken report.

After conducting a detailed inquiry, the collector reported that out of 10,069 names given by Uravakonda MLA, 4,005 names had been repeated. Hence the enquiry was taken up for 6,158 unique names. First, verification of files related to 6,158 voters had been carried out in the five mandals of the constituency. This led to a finding that in case of 2,912 deletion cases, proper procedure had not been followed.

After verification of the deleted names, door-to-door field verification of all 6,158 applications had been conducted by special teams of officers to find whether or not the deletions had been genuine. The report of the collector on June 29 revealed that 111 deletion cases had been improper.

Electoral registration officer (ERO) is the custodian of electoral rolls. Such an act of omission clearly exhibits a serious supervisory lapse across the constituency and dereliction of duty. Accordingly, the government has suspended the two officials and disciplinary action has been initiated against them, chief electoral officer Mukesh Kumar Meena stated.