Hyderabad High Court seeks Election Commission's view on anomalies in voters' list
Hyderabad: The Hyderabad High Court on Friday directed the Election Commission (EC) not to publish the final list of voters till the court peruses the affidavit to be filed by the EC on Monday on deletion of alleged bogus voters and advancing the revision of the voters list in Telangana state.
A division bench comprising Chief Justice Thottathil B. Radhakrishnan and Justice S.V. Bhatt while dealing with a petition by former minister Marri Shashidhar Reddy and another, directed the Election Commission of India to file a counter affidavit by Monday on the allegation of the petitioners with regard to deletion of bogus votes and also declare the action of the EC in advancing the revision of the voters list in the state as illegal.
Counsel appearing for Mr Shashidhar Reddy complained that a large number of genuine voters were deleted from the rolls and there are 30.13 lakh duplicate voters in the 119 Assembly segments of the state.
He said as per the voters list published in 2014 there were 2.81 crore voters in the state but the list published in the year 2018, the number of voters has come down to 2.61 crore and when they sought the reasons for the reduction in numbers, the EC informed them that those voters had gone to AP when the state was bifurcated. He said that according to the information provided them by the EC, in the number of voters in AP should increase, but instead it has reduced.
EC received 35 lakh objections
Counsel appearing for Mr Shashidhar Reddy submitted that because of the early finalisation of electoral rolls, as many as 18 lakh youth will not be able to vote as they will attain the age of 18 years only by January 1.
The counsel appearing for the Election Commission submitted that though the final list of voters was published on October 8, voters can file their objections, and including and deleting voters is a continuous process.
He told the court that the EC had received 34.9 lakh objections and on Friday alone it had resolved 1.66 lakh objections. He said that the petitioner had approached the court without seeing the publication of the final list of voters.
When the bench asked about the time of publishing of the final list on Monday, the counsel said that there is no specific time fixed for publishing the final list and it can be done any time on Monday. The bench told the counsel to file the counter affidavit with all the details and not to publish the final list till they peruse the affidavit and pronounce their decision on Monday.
