Over 80,000 in Telangana will not be able to cast vote: Poll panel

HYDERABAD: Barely 48 hours before voting gets underway for Lok Sabha election in Telangana, the election commission (EC) said 80,046 people in the state won’t be able to vote, as their request for inclusion in voter’s list came after the March 15 deadline.


Crying foul, scores of voters said they did not bother to check until the last minute as they had voted during the assembly polls, and did not have an inkling that their names would be deleted.

“In the recent Telangana assembly elections, my name was in the list. But no record was found of my name and EPIC when I checked it today,” said Murali Sudhakar, who has complained with the chief election officer of Telangana.

“I am staying at the same place for more than two decades now,” said Krishna V, a resident of Serilingampally. “My vote has been deleted without even giving a proper reason and I didn’t check my name in the electoral list, until it was too late. Why should I forgo my right for no mistake of mine.”

Aditya, a voter said: “I spent hours together trying to apply for inclusion of my name, but there were some problems with the website. I managed to apply later, but the election commission has not taken my application into consideration.” A little over 2.96 crore people from Telangana are registered to vote during the election this year.

Explaining their stand, EC officials said they added names of 22 lakh voters in the past two months, and most had applied before March 15. They also clarified that about 2.5 lakh votes were deleted after December 2018, owing to duplication, death and other valid reasons.

“More than 80,000 applied after the last date for inclusion of their names. We couldn’t process them due to statutory limit,” Rajat Kumar, chief electoral officer told TOI. Responding to allegations of deletion of genuine names, Kumar said the EC will conduct a probe after polls if needed.

While some said a thorough verification should be carried out before deleting a name from the list, others said they couldn’t apply on time due to technical glitches, and questioned the need to delete names in the first place.