BENGALURU: On Thursday, the ‘I Decide’ day for the Lok Sabha polls, many went to cast their ballot and realised that there was something amiss — missing names. They existed in the voter ID card, but they found at the polling booth that their names simply had vanished from the voters’ list. Some were angry while some said they felt “they were unimportant”.
This missing list of EPIC proportions—thousands according to a conservative estimate---has angered Bengalureans. Naturally, for they are always targeted for not going out and voting.
These residents who regularly voted and had not changed their residences, are livid that their right to vote has disappeared into the black hole of official apathy. But all the election officials said was “If we get individual complaints, we will look into them”.
Mainly people from booths in JP Nagar, BTM Shantiniketan (Mantri apartment residents), Koramangala, Rajarajeshwari Nagar and Malleswaram said their names had gone missing from the voters’ list.
Disappointed voters took to the social media and expressed unhappiness over the Election Commission’s “shabby job”. “I came all the way from Delhi to cast my vote. I have never missed voting. I am a responsible citizen and I did check on the website and found my name was there. Now, after waiting for almost 25 minutes in the queue, I realised my name was deleted! This is ridiculous!” said Pavan Kumar, of Rajajinagar.
The major casualty has been Bangalore South as claimed by its BJP candidate Tejasvi Yadav. “Been hearing massive complaints of voter names deleted from electoral rolls across the constituency. Literally thousands of names have been randomly deleted. Primary job of EC is preparing electoral rolls. Sad that they fail so miserably in this digitally advanced age,” (sic) Surya tweeted.
His uncle, MLA Ravi Subramanya, told reporters: “Over one lakh voters’ names have been missing in our constituency. We will complain to the EC.” Fasiha Kausar (26) travelled nearly 10km to vote. At the end of it, she found that as far as the authorities are concerned, she had ‘no voting right’. “They have ripped me of my rights.” She went to a booth in Cubbonpet (Bangalore South) with her sister Hina to cast her vote around 1 pm. “Out of six members in my family, our two names alone have been deleted. We had relocated to HSR Layout recently and had to commute a long way to cast our vote,” she said.
Although a majority of the complaints were received from Bangalore South and Central, in Malleswaram (Bangalore North), a group of about 100 — mostly senior citizens — staged a protest at the BBMP office saying they would not pay property tax if they were deprived of their right to vote.
Vidyanand Mullerpattan (72) and his brother Durganand Mullerpattan (66) who recently underwent a heart surgery, visited their polling booth in MES Kishore Kendra, only to find that although their names and photos were intact on the referral list, the word “deleted” was marked against their names.