HYDERABAD: Transport & BC Welfare Minister Ponnam Prabhakar on Sunday challenged state BJP president N Ramchander Rao to choose a date and time of his choice for a meeting with the electors who lost their voting rights. He promised to bring the voters affected by the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process, along with the supporting documents, to substantiate their claims.
Slamming Ramchander Rao for asking if anyone had actually lost their voting rights, the minister said the BJP leader should have encouraged efforts to correct errors and protect every eligible voter instead of issuing such statements.
Challenging the BJP leader to accept his proposal, the minister said that the issue should be addressed through evidence and verification rather than police deployment or arrests.
He demanded transparency in voter list revisions and accountability on part of the Election Commission over the alleged wrongful deletions.
Prabhakar alleged that approximately 13 crore votes had been deleted nationwide, 40 lakh in Hyderabad and 70 lakh across Telangana. He demanded the release of official figures related to the number of deletions and if any eligible citizens had been wrongly excluded from the electoral rolls.
The minister alleged that SC, ST, BC and minority voters, particularly those perceived to oppose the BJP, had been disproportionately affected. He expressed concern over poor people, senior citizens, illiterate individuals and daily-wage workers struggling to establish their eligibility despite possessing identity documents such as Aadhaar.
Citing his own experience, the minister stated that discrepancies related to his father’s name, including variations such as Sattaiah and Satyanarayana Goud, were used to question his voter details, requiring him to produce supporting evidence.
He also referred to former Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu’s reported comments in an interview about voter registration and documentation. He said the details of that interview should be examined in the broader context of the difficulties citizens may face while proving their identity and eligibility to vote.
Prabhakar urged authorities to examine electoral records, publish accurate deletion figures, restore wrongly removed names and simplify verification procedures.
He stressed that voter list revisions must be transparent, impartial and fair, without depriving eligible citizens of their constitutional rights.