NEW DELHI: Abuse of money power and misuse of the media are two of the major concerns that have surfaced, as Telangana inches closer to the December 7 election. Talking to The Sunday Standard, Chief Election Commissioner Om Prakash Rawat said, “Abuse of money power and abuse or misuse of the media, are the key challenges, particularly in Telangana. In the 2014 polls, over 154 crore was seized in Andhra Pradesh only. This time also, all political parties have expressed their worries and have told the commission that these two things are their main areas of concern.”
Rawat agreed that in every election, innovative tactics to woo voters are used during campaigning. “Abuse of money will be rampant and therefore the commission is taking effective steps to control and regulate this. Similarly, media ownership has gone into the hands of political parties through different means and they are regularly campaigning for persons who are favoured by their owners. This will be checked,” he added.
On the controversies surrounding deletion of names from the voters’ list, the CEC asserted that the poll panel uses latest technology to vet and update the electoral rolls.“Earlier, the electoral roll used to be on paper and it was nearly impossible to find anomalies. Thereafter, the Election Commission took the initiative to digitize it. Many things have come out.
A lot of voters’ names were deleted on various accounts. We started many programmes and introduced software to ensure the ‘purification’ of electoral rolls. It is being done since 2015. In Telangana, many political parties submitted their lists, which we sent to officials for verification. Similarly, in Rajasthan, many civil societies had complained about the rolls and we took steps accordingly. This way, the electoral roll has become clean without any anomalies,” Rawat said.
The number of voters in Telangana has come down from 2.82 crore in 2014 to 2.73 crore as per the final rolls published this month. The net deletions were about 22 lakh as 12 lakh new voters were added. The EC has said that the removal of names from the list is due to multiple entries of voters and migrated and dead voters. The Congress had approached the Supreme Court over the deletion of a large number of voters’ names from the rolls. The matter was subsequently referred to Hyderabad High Court.
Telangana voter list row
In Telangana, the number of voters has come down from 2.82 crore in 2014 to 2.73 crore as per the final rolls published this month. The net deletions were about 22 lakh as 12 lakh new voters were added. The EC has said the removal of names is due to multiple entries of voters, migrated and dead voters.