Hindu Business Line: Hansa Venkateswaran: Bangalore:
Monday, April 29, 2013.
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| SILENCE OF THE DELETED... Bangalore residents who went 'missing' from the voters' list in 2009.. |
A total of 3,32,131 people in Bangalore have
been denied the right to vote in the upcoming Assembly elections.
It seems they primarily belong to the minority
communities and economically weaker sections.
If they want to re-enlist online, they will have
to pay Rs 10 each. If all the unlisted voters do this, it will amount to a total of Rs.
33.2 lakh paid by the ‘ghost’ electorate to the Government.
When asked if the amount will be written off by
the Government, Chief Electoral Officer Anil Kumar Jha refused to comment.
Some of the constituencies where the number of
deletions of names are more than 20,000 include Gandhinagar , Chickpet, Sarvagnanagar, Vijaynagar, Basavanagudi,
Padmanabhanagar and BTM Layout.
Former mayor P.R. Ramesh sparked off anger when he
revealed that one constituency, Chickpet, had 42,000 fewer voters. He had
acquired data on all the constituencies via a Right to Information (RTI)
request. Following this, the Election Commission initiated an investigation.
S.M. Ayub, president of the Karnataka Pradesh
Congress Committee (KPCC), said: “About 15,000 minorities’ names out of a
total of 29,000 were deleted from the electoral roll in my constituency alone this year.
We filed a complaint with the Election Commission and now we are on a
door-to-door campaign to tell people that they will be asked to register
themselves for voter IDs.”
Individuals wanting to make changes in the details
in their cards need apply online. They will have to visit an eSeva centre where
they will have to pay a nominal fee of Rs 10. While the rest of the job is
done online, all the individual has to do is go and collect the ID.
However, those who do not have easy access to
Internet will have to spend more as they not only have to get the forms from
the nearest office but also pay for postal services.
Abdul Karim, 53, a bedding merchant at
Chickpet, said: “Currently, I do not have a voter ID card. Every time the
Government changes, they bring new laws. I do not know why my name is not there
in the electoral list this year. I received my aadhaar card, my name got
deleted.”
When they were asked why the names had been
deleted, individuals working at the poll booths said the details in the cards
were either changed or not provided properly or did not exist and so they were
asked to remove their names.
Afzal, 25, a gas mechanic at
Kalasipalaya, said: “How can they remove the name from the electoral list? I do
not understand why they tell that us that it is mandatory to have the aadhaar
card for us to vote. They say that as we don’t have the aadhaar cards, our
names have been deleted from the list.”
(Hansa is a student of the Indian Institute of
Journalism and New Media, Bangalore.)
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