Several voters in Telangana on Friday complained that their names missing from the voters list on the day of polling, reported The News Minute. Polling was held for 119 seats in Telangana which has an electorate of over 2.8 crore.
Badminton player and Arjuna awardee Jwala Gutta tweeted on Friday morning that her name was not mentioned in the list. “How’s the election fair...when names r [are] mysteriously disappearing from the list!” she said.
Gutta also posted a video explaining that she had checked online for her name and only then visited the booth, where she found out that her name was missing. She said the names of her father and sister were also missing, while her mother was able to cast her vote.
“I have been living at the same residence for the past 12 years…why are the names being deleted?” she said.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia retweeted Gutta’s post. “This is happening all over the country,” Kejriwal said.
Sisodia questioned the Election Commission on why Gutta’s name was missing from the list. “Oh ECI! You must be busy with strategies being instructed from BJP war room” he tweeted.
Several voters took to Twitter to raise complaints of missing names using the hashtag #whereismyvote.
In Kamareddy district, over 300 people whose names were missing from the list, staged a protest at the electoral office. Ravindra Reddy, who works at the district court in Kamareddy, told The News Minute that he could not find his and those of three family members in the list.
An unidentified polling officer in Hyderabad’s Khairatabad constituency said over 100 voters complained that their data was missing from electoral rolls.
According to The Hindu, several names were deleted from the electoral rolls after an exercise to to link Aadhaar with the voter ID card. The State Election Commission later allowed voters to add their names back in the electoral rolls and provided them new voter cards.
“Our names were included during latest survey,” Mohammed Ashfaq Ali from Amberpet in Hyderabad. “We were promised new EPICs [Electoral Photo Identity Cards], but they have not been delivered. Now, my vote has disappeared from rolls.”
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