PATNA: Rajkumar Lal Srivastava is at a loss as the name of one of the eight eligible voters in his family has been deleted from the voters’ list. But what came as a rude shock for him is that the address of a Muslim family is the same as the house in which his family has been residing for long now.
“How it is possible? How can the address of a Hindu family and that of a Muslim community be the same? I have doubts that this could be a part of a larger conspiracy,” Katihar-resident Srivastava questioned.
He said his family has unnecessarily been dragged into a controversy over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of Bihar electoral rolls. Srivastava is a resident of House Number 118 at Bazar Samiti in Katihar town. His polling station (280) is located at Bazar Samiti.
Similarly, the name of Mantoo Rishi’s wife Munni Devi has been removed from the voters’ list. Instead, one Syed Akhtar Alam and Farida Khatoon have been added in the list. Mantoo said he would lodge a formal complaint at the special camp for rectification of errors.
Manesh Kumar Meena, Katihar district magistrate, said, “Such anomalies in the draft electoral rolls have come to the notice of the administration. We have ordered an investigation and process to rectify the errors has started.”
In Jehanabad, residents of Zafarpur alleged that names of 200 electors, mostly Muslims, have been deleted from draft electoral rolls. Mohammad Nawaz, a local resident, said that he was surprised to note that his name did not figure in the revised voters’ list.
“How can it happen? Out of five members in the family, names of four still exist. Only my name has been removed. If there was any discrepancy in the enumeration form, my brother’s name would have been deleted. But this is not the case,” he said.
Another resident Mohammad Danish said, “My parents’ names exist in the revised voter list except me and my brother.” Similarly, Mohammad Qurban Alam said that his name was missing whereas his wife’s name was there. He claimed that he had provided relevant documents to the booth-level officer (BLO) concerned during verification exercise.
When residents of Zafarpur brought the matter to the notice of Jehanabad district magistrate Alankrita Pandey, she assured that an initiative would be taken to include the names of the ‘missing’ persons after verification of documents.
“Special camps are being organised at the block office for a month where people can add their names by filing in Form 6. If name of any individual has been erroneously deleted, his/her name may be included with the production of one of the 11 documents required for the purpose,” the DM said.