Thu. Mar 28th, 2024

The claims made by Congress turned out to be true when Telangana chief electoral officer Rajat Kumar said on Monday that about 2.2 million names have been removed from the electoral rolls since the 2014 elections in the state. Addressing the press he said, “Yes, if you are looking at the 2014 assembly elections, there were roughly about 2.83 crore voters back then and as of now there about 2.61 crores. The number of voters on the draft rolls has come down,” reported by Mint. Earlier Congress had alleged of 3million disparity in electoral rolls.

Former Congress MLA, Shahshidhar Reddy revealed that the Congress has filed a petition in the Supreme Court against it. He said, “The Congress has approached the Supreme Court and is expecting its petition to be heard soon”. An RTI activist who runs a public information portal called factly.in, commented, “Across the country, the number of voters goes up every election, given that India’s population goes up every year. Even if it has been done going by the rulebook, those whose names have been deleted must be informed”.

However, the officer cannot come to a conclusion as to what may have been the reason behind this decrease in the electoral names. Citing some visible reasons he said that some names have been removed in 2015 when Adhar verification was done but it stopped after SC ordered against it. A new software has also been used which could be one of the reasons of deletion of names. He also said that there are some people living here who have chosen to vote in the neighboring state of Andhra Pradesh.

Earlier the EC had decided to publish a special summary revision of the electoral rolls on October 8 but has now sought to publish the final list of voters on the aforementioned date.

Telangana assembly was initially scheduled in May. But due to the premature dissolution of assembly by the CM K C Rao, the polls are likely to be held by the end of this year.

By fatima

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