Bahubali, Idly, Nit Sex: Meet latest voters in Telangana

HYDERABAD: You don’t expect pranksters to play jokes with electoral rolls ahead of crucial Lok Sabha elections. But at least some names that Election Commission officials have deleted from the rolls in recent days give the impression that a handful of people have stretched their sense of humour a little too far.
Among the names that officials have zeroed in on are ‘Bahubali’, ‘Idly’, ‘Apple’ and ‘Hyderabad’. There are a select bunch of voters who have ‘Sex’ and ‘F***’ as prefix with their names. Officials say some of these names could be non-existing voters, while others are typos.
So far, 37 suspicious names have been identified and booth-level officers (BLOs) have been sent to verify them. Eighteen names have already been deleted.
For instance, EPIC number ZEU0462135 has the voter listed as ‘Modi, son of Modi of Rasoolpura in Secunderabad Cantonment Constituency’. Another voter with the EPIC number GBZ8252264 is registered as ‘Bahubali, son of Chouguli in Tarnaka Welfare Association Reading Room polling station in Secunderabad constituency’. A woman voter is registered as ‘Nit Sex’ in Domalguda in Musheerabad constituency. Another voter has ‘f***’ as a prefix in Nirmal constituency.
CEO: Cleaning electoral rolls
After the assembly polls, we added 17 lakh new votes and deleted around 2.5 lakh votes. The deleted voter names included 44,000 who have died and 1.9 lakh duplicate names. Now, we are cleaning up the rolls even further. All measures are being taken,” Telangana chief electoral officer Rajat Kumar told TOI.
Booth-level officers have been directed to check votes of all VIPs, including badminton player Jawala Gutta and IPS officer Krishna Prasad, whose names were missing in the assembly polls and triggered a controversy. “Very few genuine names go missing, but when it involves a VIP, they draw attention. We are ensuring that BLOs check VIPs living in their locality. I also appeal to all citizens to search their names in the electoral rolls and apply for corrections or for fresh enrolment,” Kumar said.