EC to act tough on mass addition, deletion of voters

Eluru: State Chief Electoral Officer Gopalakrishna Dwivedi has warned stern action against persons responsible for massive addition or deletion of voters.

Addressing Collectors, EROs in a video conference from Secretariat at Velagapudi on Thursday night, he said that applications received through Form 7 by the booth-level officer would be scrutinised in three phases before taking a decision on it. The voters need not worry about their vote and give room for apprehensions.

He ordered the district Collectors to prepare plans regarding pending applications in different constituencies and try to solve them in the stipulated time.

He asked the officials to complete the verification of applications from voters and data entry process on a war-footing. With regard to voter deletion, the proposals should be send to Election Commission (EC).

He set March 5 deadline for completion of verification for voter registrations. Later, in-charge Collector M Venugopal Reddy asked the EROs to complete verification of 2,000 applications every day to finish the target.

Referring to differently-abled persons, he said that though their population figure is 47,249 as per pension data, registered voters account for only 25,965. He suggested to verify whether the physically-challenged registered as voter or not at the time of pension distribution.

The Collector said Dwivedi that a total 1.77 lakh applications were received for voter registration and changes. While 61,857 applications were accepted, 6,564 applications were rejected so far.

As many as 91,265 applications were still pending with them. The administration is availing services of engineering students also to clear the pending applications, he added.

District Revenue Officer M Satyanarayana, EROs of different constituencies participated.