HYDERABAD: It was a triple whammy for voters in surrounding municipal circles of Greater Hyderabad on polling day. No voter slips, glitches in ceotelangana.gov.in portal and ‘Naa Vote’ app left lakhs of electors without the option of ‘NOTA’.
First, civic officials failed to deliver voter slips to eligible voters in several constituencies, including the keenly-watched Kukatpally segment.
Scores of voters were seen sifting through bundles of voter slips with GHMC staff, sitting on the pavement on the way to St Andrew’s School, Bowenpally, one of the polling stations in Kukatpally constituency. Some voters even got into arguments with civic staff for their failure to deliver voter slips at their homes. GHMC staff was also seen distributing electoral photo identity cards (EPICs) just metres away from the polling station. When asked why slips and EPICs were not distributed, ahead of the voting day, the staff claimed they were overburdened and the voter slips were delivered at the eleventh hour.
Sk Shirin, a voter, walked into the polling station at St Andrews with his EPIC, but minutes later rushed out fuming as his name was not in the latest voter’s list.
“I had voted at this very polling station in the 2014 polls, but now my name is missing,” he rued.
When he searched for his name on the ‘Naa Vote’ app, he got a response screen, “Alert! Sorry, Server busy please try again…” After a couple of attempts, he gave up and walked away.
Meanwhile, ceotelangana-.nic.in portal was unavailable for several hours and when it resurfaced, under the ‘Search Your Name’ tab for ‘Assembly constituency’, it only allowed NVSP (National Voters’ Services Portal) search. It dropped the name-based search option (link 2).
On Thursday night, the CEO Telangana portal left lakhs of voters, who were yet to get their voter slips, amused. The master data on its home page was accurate, but when voters tried to pull details for voter slips from name-based search option (link-II), it threw up quirky details.
For instance, a 54-year-old woman voter’s age was ‘720’, while her polling station number and name was ‘54’. Funnily, she was wife/of: 82-SR Digi School, HAL Colony, Old Bowenpally. Except the voter’s name, all details were in diarray.
