Alive, yet ‘dead’: Hyd voters find names missing from electoral rolls
Hyderabad: After flagging the bulk submission of Form 7, voters across several Hyderabad constituencies have raised concerns over their names being deleted from the electoral rolls after being marked as either ‘dead’ or ‘permanently shifted’, despite having lived at the same address for years. On-ground election officials have asked affected voters to fill Form 6 — meant for registering as a new voter — instead of restoring their names to the electoral rolls. “A 22-year-old man, Mohd Aqeel Ahmed, is alive and is a resident of Falaknuma. Demanding that the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) be scrapped, several voters alleged that the exercise amounted to mass disenfranchisement rather than a revision of the electoral rolls, with thousands of voters’ names being deleted following Form 7 submissions during the process. 11.25 lakh as absent or untraceable, and 9.22 lakh as dead, no specific reason has been given for the remaining voters While 45.18 lakh have been listed as permanently shifted.
Such errors have come to light in Serilingampally, Kukatpally, Malkajgiri and Chandrayangutta constituencies, among others. But he is shown as dead, and his vote has been deleted. How is this fair?” asked Syed Jalaluddin Zafar of Youth Welfare Telangana, questioning how such errors could have occurred while the Election Commission was preparing the draft electoral rolls. Zafar, meanwhile, alleged that Ahmed’s case was not an isolated one and that many voters in Chandrayangutta and other constituencies had similarly been shown as dead or permanently shifted and had their names deleted despite submitting enumeration forms.
As per data released by the chief electoral officer, Telangana, 73,39,235 voters have been included in the Absent, Shifted, Dead or Duplicate (ASDD) list, of whom around 48 lakh are from constituencies in Greater Hyderabad.