On Day 5 of TOI’s campaign, Sudipta Sengupta and Nirupa Vatyam hunt buildings that don’t house the voters that the electoral rolls reflectJubilee Hills boy’s hostel houses 20 women voters!HYDERABAD: A multi-storied boy’s hostel bang in the middle of busy Yousufguda in Jubilee Hills constituency has 103 voters on the electoral rolls. At least 20 of these are women! All of them have the same door number: 8-3-250/1/C and are assigned to the same polling booth: Govt High School (New Building) 8-3-234, Yousufguda check post.
When TOI visited the premises on Friday, the hostel staff said it housed 60-odd boarders with the owners living in a penthouse. Barring the latter’s family – comprising not more than five members – the rest aren’t locals and do not have any votes in Jubilee Hills. Of course, they also confirmed that none of the residents are women.
Right next to this is another property: 8-3-250/A/1. This building has 50 voters as per Election Commission data. When checked on the ground, the tenants said they weren’t aware of the names listed on the rolls. The building has just about six flats.
Employees at the shop adjacent to this also drew a blank when TOI showed them the names registered against its door number: 8-3-250/1/A. There are about 15. “We do not know who these people are,” said one of them. Local political leaders allege there are at least 400 such votes in and around this part of the constituency that are fictitious. “In August, we wrote to the CEO about such places urging him to act. Despite him instructing officials to take it up on priority on September 29, we found these votes on the electoral rolls,” said Lankala Deepak Reddy, BJP’s state executive member.
Speaking to TOI Ronald Rose, district election officer of Hyderabad admitted to such issues but added: “It is not that those people who have been listed under one address do not exist. They are there somewhere, only their entries are wrong. Our teams are working on correcting their addresses.”
Lost and never found: House numbers & voters It can be tough finding an address in some of the streets of Hyderabad. Now ima-gine hunting down a house number if the only one given to you is ‘Telangana’, ‘hut’ or ‘thanda’.
Voters with vague addresses populate many constituencies in Telangana, including Serilingampally, Maheshwaram, and Rajendra Nagar. In booth number 335 of Serilingampally, there are as many as 113 voters whose addresses read as ‘hut’. As many as 289 voters’ house numbers read as Thanda. In the same booth, some of the house numbers are listed as ‘Telangana’ and ‘Miyapur.’
In booth number 340 in Maheshwaram, 90 voters have their house numbers listed as ‘hut’. “Even the BLOs will struggle to locate these voters. How can they mention whatever they want in the house number column?” questioned a Congress leader.
An election officer said that they had to mention ‘hut’ or ‘thanda’ as people are living illegally on encroached land. “We can neither legalise them by giving house numbers nor deprive them of their constitutional right to vote. So, we issued EPIC numbers by mentioning ‘hut’ or ‘thanda’,” said an official.
This temple in Miyapur houses 50-plus votersEver heard of a temple housing voters? There is one in the Serilingampally constituency. Not just one or two voters, there are as many as 53 voters listed against ‘Sai Mandir’ in Miyapur. The electoral rolls, published on October 4, say all these voters are registered at MPP School, New Colony.
“When no one is living in the temple, how can 50 people be listed as voters against it? What’s the guarantee that these are not bogus voters?” asked a leader. Parties and activists say that there is no way to check whether these voters are genuine or bogus. They claim most of the voters do not even live in the area as they keep moving for work.
The booth-level officer (BLO) of the area, however, maintained that these voters were genuine and residents of Laxmi Nagar in Miyapur. “As they have no house numbers, we issued voter IDs by mentioning the house number as Sai Mandir. This has been done based on my superiors’ instructions,” he said.
Officials, meanwhile, maintain that they are not aware of any voters registered against a temple in Serilingampally. An election officer pointed out that even Karwan has voters registered at a local temple.
EC guidelines say if the residence of the applicant does not have a house number, it should be clearly mentioned as ‘no house number has been assigned’.
Times View:
Every vote counts in a democracy like India. Having electoral rolls with minimal errors is the best way to ensure that no one is denied this crucial right on which a democracy stands. This also means the misuse of this right can potentially hurt our democratic institutions. Going by the number of discrepancies detected in state’s electoral rolls, there is an urgent need for a door-to-door survey before 2024 Lok Sabha polls.