Tirupati: Oppn parties express concern over fake voters’ enrolment

TIRUPATI: The alleged fake voter enrollment in the district has been creating ripples in the opposition parties. They raised serious concerns about the ruling party’s attempts to enrol fake voters indiscriminately in all constituencies in a bid to win all seats by any means.

TDP and Jana Sena separately took to the streets already and staged protests against bogus voters’ enrollment.

During the recently held special summary revision (SSR) survey, over 50,000 voters were not traced in the district. Majority of them are said to be in Tirupati and Chandragiri constituencies. The political parties have raised serious doubts on these voters and suspect that they are fake voters. It may be recalled that the district has a total electorate of 17.33 lakh voters spread over seven constituencies.

TDP district president G Narasimha Yadav took to the notice of the Collector that about 27,000 fake voter ID cards were identified which are unmatched with the addresses and returned to the postal department. Reacting positively, Collector K Venkataramana Reddy wrote to the Superintendent of Posts, to list out such incidents urgently and send them to the Collectorate. He made it clear that the postmen in the district should be directed to return the EPIC cards to the Collector’s office if they are not delivered.

Yadav told The Hans India that there are at least 400 bogus voters in every division while the whole city is having more than 20,000 such voters while Chandragiri constituency is having over 30,000 fake voters.

The TDP has all this data and submitted it to the election authorities. Unless a transparent enquiry is done the truth will not come out, he averred.

Chandragiri TDP women leader Pulivarthy Sudha Reddy held a dharna before the RDO office recently to expose the fake voters issue in the constituency. Even the names of deceased persons were not removed from the voters list for the last 25 years and it was found that even their votes were also being polled in various elections.

Without conducting any ‘Grama Sabha’ polling booths have been increased from 325 to 388. She also demanded the appointment of an IAS officer as election officer.

Jana Sena leaders also staged a protest recently and demanded removal of fake voters in all the constituencies. The party leaders have even submitted a representation to the district election officer and Collector K Venkataramana Reddy on Tuesday to remove the bogus voters from electoral rolls in Tirupati constituency immediately by conducting a thorough enquiry.