Hyderabad: BJP cries foul over electoral rolls preparation,urges ECI to act soon

Hyderabad: A BJP-Telangana delegation on Saturday met the Election Commission of India (ECI) official and submitted a representation highlighting several lapses in the deletion of voters from the electoral rolls and sought its intervention to prevent a repeat of the same in the ensuing elections.

The delegation comprising BJP senior leaders and former NMDA Vice-Chairman Marri Shashidhar Reddy, former MLA Y. Laxmi Narayana, G Ramo Rao Yadav of BJP Legal Cell and Ponna Venkataramana, BJP city vice president raised issues related to the transfers and posting of officials involved in the election process as communicated to the state chief secretaries from the ECI on June 2, 2023.

They alleged that the Telangana government has not acted upon the same despite it being routinely practised ahead of the elections. “It is totally controlled by the Chief Advisor to the State Government and former Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar," they pointed out and added that the state advisor in question had a dubious record of being found responsible for the illegal deletion of lakhs of names from the voter's lists of 24 Assembly constituencies of the GHMC when he was the Commissioner of GHMC in 2015.

They recalled that responding to a representation, ECI had sent "for their first time in India, a high level committee of officials consisting of 14 members, it was observed that Somesh Kumar was responsible for the illegal deletion of votes and was immediately transferred out of GHMC."

Requesting the commission's intervention the delegation said that there are many officials in the rank of SI and above of Special Branch, Intelligence and Law and Order in the South Zone of the Hyderabad Police Commissionerate who have been working in the South Zone, for several years in different positions and levels and should be transferred out of the South Zone forthwith.

Besides, several police officers worked in the same area even after promotion from SI to ACP. "ECI should obtain a list of all such officials and give necessary orders to the State government and allot a definite timeframe to complete the whole process."

The BJP leaders complained that many deliberate and serious attempts were made in the preparation of electoral rolls to give an advantage to the ruling BRS in the next assembly elections.

Making a specific reference and demanding immediate suspension of ERO, 52 - Serilingampally AC in preparing a defective electoral roll, they said. "There are about 5,155 voters of the Assembly Constituency, whose houses cannot be traced and all of them end with “/IRER”.

Similarly, there are about 4000 people eligible to be voters in “My Home Bhooja”, a gated community. But, only 146 names are included in the voter's list under 26 different polling stations. This is a deliberate attempt to deny eligible voters to cast their votes.

About 40,000 voters in the Serilingampally constituency whose names were illegally deleted in December 2022 and are missing from the Rolls published on January 5, 2023. However, when this was pointed out, they are now obtaining Forms 7 for these persons.

There are three polling stations - PS Nos 82, 83 and 84 in Danthanpally Village, 6 - Khanapur AC (in Utnoor Mandal). Names of about 741 voters out of the total of 2840 voters were illegally deleted for the Sarpanch By-election in March 2017.

When asked, the local Revenue Divisional Officer (RDO) Utnoor, ERO Khanapur, had said "non-linking of their Voter IDs with Aadhaar Card” for the deletions, even when names of dead persons continued to figure in the voter's list.

The ECI directed the CEO of Telangana to take action against the erring officials. However, the repeated reminder to the State chief secretaries since then to act against the erring official did not yield results. The delegation urged the ECI to pass necessary instructions to ensure that action is taken against the officials, even if they have retired from service.