Hyderabad: The use of technology, which officials thought would help purify electoral rolls, resulted in several voters being excluded from voting. Those who had their voter ID card assumed that they would find their names in the voter list. They found that they were left out not only on Friday.
Chief Electoral Officer Rajat Kumar apologised. “Deletion of voters has been a major complaint. It is mistake that has happened and it is a problem which needs to be seriously addressed. Those who have been denied of their vote, I apologise to them. I am responsible for it,” he said.
The Election Commiss-ion undertook the National Electoral Roll Purification and Authenti-cation Programme (NERPAP) by linking Aadhaar data with voter ID cards. In 2015, the Telangana State Election Commission deleted 27 lakh names, which was put to an end by the Supreme Court.
The hashtag #whereismyvote trended all day as thousands failed to find their names in the voters list. Mr Kumar said, “We conducted inquiry on (the missing name of) Jwala Gutta and personally apologise to her and every citizen. Her ID was deleted in 2015 under Intensive Revision of Electoral Rolls (IRER). Her mother’s name was not deleted. We are asking for a formal report from the ERO who was there during final publication.”
He added that if the names were deleted in 2015, Form 7 notices should be issued to the persons concerned. If there was no reply to Form 7, the name would be deleted.
Mr Kumar said, “In 2016, 2017 and 2018 SSR was done. Even from October 25 to November 5, we asked voters to check their names through all possible media. We are apologetic that they couldn’t utilize this opportunity.”
The EC did not release the list of voters whose names had been deleted. Mr Kumar said, “On September 10, we published the electoral roll, there were 2.61 crore voters. When we went to this election, there were 2.81 crore voters. In the two-month period 21 lakh additions were done, the names of 3 lakh dead voters and 2 lakh duplicate voters were deleted.”
Experts said the EC erred in the name of removing duplicates. The details of the algorithm, source-code or the creator of software, were not disclosed. A PIL was filed in the Hyderabad High Court over the deletion of votes stating that using algorithms was illegal, and in violation of fundamental rights.
Mr Srinivas Kodali, who filed the PIL, said, “People have been complaining to the EC before the elections. It is unfortunate that the EC did not pay heed. It tried to hush up the issue by not disclosing how it had done the deletions. They made the deletions with the help of Aadhaar. The commission acted in a way which undermined democracy.”
Mr Kodali said the EC disclose all the deletions that were made. “They need to disclose where the deletions happened in every constituency at the polling booth level,” he said.
From December 26, the voter enrollment programme will be launched and will be finalized in February. The EC said it would be more careful and asked voters to take it seriously.
Mr Kiran Chandra, general secretary of the Free Software Movement of India, said, “Aadhaar was not supposed to be integrated with voting, as any individual who did not link Aadhaar would lose their right to vote. The EC has to explain why it matched the voter list with Aadhaar.”
