One voter left, rest erased: Ahmedabad society denied franchise

Ahmedabad: As the city voted to elect 190 councillors to the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) on Sunday, several voters reached polling booths only to discover that their names were missing from the electoral rolls. In Ramol-Hathijan ward, around 1,000 residents from 303 households of Pushpak City found themselves in a bind after their names did not figure on the voters' list, barring one woman who was able to cast her vote. Residents of Pushpak City have been voting in all elections over the past eight years. A society member, Bakul Thakkar, raised questions over the election process. "The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) may not have been conducted properly. All these residents voted in previous elections, but their names have been removed this time. This should not have happened. Only one woman's name appeared on the entire list," Thakkar said. Similar complaints of missing names were reported from other localities in the eastern parts of the city. Vishal Saroj, a daily wager from Rakhial who was to vote in Bapunagar ward, also could not locate his name. "I kept moving from one place to another to find my name on the voters' list, but it was missing this time," he said. Another daily wager, Muzammil Ansari, alleged fault on part of the authorities. "I was not present when the SIR was carried out in my society, which may be the reason. However, my family members submitted all required documents, yet my name was deleted," he said. Suresh Patel, a resident of Science City Road, said he visited the polling booth on Sunday morning with his wife. "We have been voting together for years, so it came as a shock that my name was on the list, but my wife's name was missing. We took part in the recent voter list updation exercise and submitted all the required documents. It was strange that her name did not appear. We have already raised the issue with the BLO to ensure it does not recur in the next election," he said. As lakhs of citizens turned out to vote in Sunday's civic body polls, several Amdavadis were left searching for their names in the electoral rolls. While some complained that they received no intimation from the Election Commission or political parties, others said they had to run from one place to another to locate their names on the list. For Ranna Parmar, a resident of South Bopal, her name did not appear under her own society, but under a similarly named one. "I had to go to that society, locate the polling booth and approach the staff on duty to check if my name was there. To my surprise, it was included in that list. This happened despite a recent roll update," she said. Rohit Patel, a social worker from the Science City area, said he knew of at least two voters who had deleted their names from old addresses and got them transferred to the area. "Despite that, they could not vote in this election due to lack of proper updates," he said. BOX-1 No booth slips, poor signage inconvenience voters The elections on Sunday saw confusion and inconvenience for voters across the city due to lack of basic facilitation. The problems were reported across all 48 wards, where 4,257 polling stations were set up. Unlike the 2024 Lok Sabha and 2022 Gujarat assembly elections, voters were not provided slips indicating their polling booths. The Gujarat State Election Commission did not deploy booth-level officers to distribute slips, forcing many voters to spend hours locating their booths. In several areas, voters were directed to new polling locations instead of those used earlier. Complaints were reported from Bodakdev, Thaltej, Nava Vadaj, Stadium, Navrangpura and Paldi, where voters moved between centres in the heat before finding the correct booths. In some western wards, polling station names and booth numbers were not prominently displayed, increasing confusion at centres housing multiple booths. Voters were also surprised to find that VVPAT machines were not installed alongside EVMs. BOX-2 Congress, BJP workers clash in Kubernagar Tension flared on Sunday afternoon when Congress and BJP workers clashed at the VV Tomar School polling station in Kubernagar ward. Police intervened and dispersed the groups after considerable effort. No complaint was filed following the incident.
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