BENGALURU: Ahead of the much anticipated Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) polls this year, various political parties, including Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Bengaluru Navanirmana Party (BNP), and citizens have raised concerns over wrong mapping of voters with various wards in the city.
They have also alleged that at least 1,000 voters in each of the 369 wards under the five city corporations might have been wrongly mapped.
Ashok Mruthyunjaya, AAP, said, “Our party has started going door-to-door in Bellandur ward. We have found that people in this ward have been wrongly mapped to some other ward. We are going to submit a letter to the state election commission (SEC) wherever these discrepancies are found and get the voters name mapped in their respective wards. If they fail to fix it, we will explore legal options.
Currently, our party is verifying the voters’ list in Vignan Nagar, Gandhinagar and other wards too. We will prepare the data with the details of these discrepancies in the voters’ list and submit it to SEC.”
Srikanth Narsimhan, founder of BNP, said, “Several voters have been mapped to wards where they do not reside. For instance, analysis of ward no 34 (Chikkathoguru) and ward no 33 (Naganathapura) found 47 voters wrongly mapped under Naganathapura and 105 voters incorrectly placed in Chikkathoguru.”
He added that since publicly available rolls do not contain complete address details, the actual number of misplaced voters could exceed 1,000 in each ward. Therefore, as a solution, Narsimhan suggested to implement sectioning.
“Sectioning requires residents from the same physical geography—such as a street or apartment complex—to be grouped within a single section of a polling booth so that wrong mapping doesn’t happen. For this, booth-level officials can coordinate with the RWAs and apartment associations so that there are no discrepancies.”
S Harish, former mayor, said, “In case people are being wrongly mapped or there are any anomalies, they should approach GBA to get it rectified. GBA and SEC are mapping the voter list available in 2012 or 2014 to the respective wards, but they have failed to update the data of deceased people in the voters’ list. My father passed away in 2014 and his name exists in the voter list.”
Vinay Sreenivas, a citizen rights activist, said, “Mapping is being done poorly in the city. There is no communication to citizens regarding mapping of their names by BLOs or GBA or SEC. This mapping will create the basis for the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise. Wrong mapping of citizens in the ward-level voter list will give a wrong database for SIR.”
On the other hand, booth-level officials, which include government teachers and anganwadi workers, have alleged that they have been pressurised to meet the deadline for mapping voters within an unrealistic timeline as SIR is likely to begin from April.
Jyothi A, president of the National Federation of Indian Women (NFIW), Karnataka, said, “We work with anganwadi workers at NFIW and we learnt that many BLOs were suspended for not meeting the deadline of mapping voters on time. In addition, the mobile application used for mapping voters includes options to map son, daughter, grandson and granddaughter’s name. There is no provision to map daughter-in-laws and son-in-laws name. In such instances, this will lead to major discrepancies not only for GBA polls but also during the upcoming SIR.”
Deadline to file plaints now March 20
After receiving various complaints from citizens as well as party representatives, the Greater Bengaluru Authority announced on Monday that the date to file complaints and objections about the draft electoral roll has been extended from March 16 to March 20. A copy of the said draft electoral roll will be available for voters to view at the registrar and assistant registrar of voters offices of all the assembly constituencies and at the ward offices. Voters can also check their names on https://gba.karnataka.gov.in/electoral2026.