BENGALURU: Ahead of the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) polls, booth-level officers, who were involved in voter mapping, have claimed that they were not given proper training on mapping voters across the city. More than 8,000 BLOs in Bengaluru were involved in mapping voters.
Mahadevamma (name changed), an anganwadi teacher, said, “There was no special training for us. We had to learn on our own from 12-15 minute videos from YouTube shared in our WhatsApp groups. We were given the voter list from 2002 till 2024 and asked to map them. In case of no changes in the number of voters in a particular family, then the same data will be mapped. If there are additions and deletions then we must make those changes.”
Another anganwadi teacher, who was assigned the same ward as her anganwadi school, said when such important exercises like mapping voters are being conducted, there needs to be prior advertisement through various mediums so that people are aware of it. “I was assigned to verify 1,500 voters and map them as well.
Another problem in voter mapping is lack of access to the full address of a residence. Since there was delimitation of wards after the GBA was formed, some streets are on the border of two wards. In such instances, lack of complete address and training puts BLOs and supervisors under confusion of how to map them,” the teacher said.
Speaking to TNIE, a senior official from the State Election Commission (SEC), said, “Training was provided to officials at the booth level. Despite training them, there are always some discrepancies in the voter list because of the new ward delimitation.
There is also something called as ‘heritage list’ in which the same discrepancies (wrong spelling of voters’ name, door number etc) have been existing for a long time. Such discrepancies or faults can be identified but they should be rectified during the Special Intensive Revision.
In case a resident has shifted from Jayanagar to RT Nagar due to lease or rental purposes, then they must contact the BLO in Jayanagar, fill Form 8 and provide their current address to the BLO in RT Nagar. They will be mapped accordingly.”