Ahead of the elections to the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), the municipal body has released a draft voter list, and it will be releasing the final list soon. Due to delimitation, ward boundaries have changed and people from new wards don't have clarity about their ward numbers. The BBMP published the list on August 25 without much preparation, and people found it difficult to navigate and figure out their names on the list.
DH spoke to a cross section of Bengaluru voters to know their issues with the updated voter rolls.
Jigna Modh, a resident of HSR layout, is facing a peculiar issue. “After the ward delimitation, my house of three members comes under Iblur ward. Two members have their votes in the same ward but my vote has been shifted to the nearby Agara ward. I don’t understand how three people living in the same house have their votes in different wards,” wonders Jigna.
“A month back, a BBMP officer had come to our place for the survey and that time, I observed the name of a stranger in the voter list instead of my name. I had raised this issue and he assured me of correcting it, but that’s not done,” adds Jigna. The stranger's name was removed, but her name is still there in the other ward. She has filed objections and is hoping to fix this.
A resident of Mangammanapalya, Madhu Sudhan Venkatesh’s name has been deleted from the new voter list. “I was surprised to see my name deleted from the new voter list. I had voted in the previous two BBMP polls. These kinds of omissions should not happen and the election commission should follow a zero tolerance approach while correcting these,” he says.
“I have heard that in our Bommanahalli constituency, voter cards have been issued to migrant labourers hailing from Tamil Nadu border areas who possess voter IDs at their native as well. My hunch is that in order to accommodate those votes, some of the legitimate names from the constituency have been removed to get the correct tally,” adds Madhu Sudhan who is also active in citizen forums.
He further alleges that there is large-scale corruption by BBMP officials in this process. He says the Election Commission must dissociate itself from BBMP and work independently to assure that every citizen gets his/her democratic right.
Prakash Nedungadi, a political activist, says that the main contention with the new draft voter list is that it is not updated as claimed. “The names of voters who have died or shifted out of Bengaluru are still there. The list has been created without doing any ground work,” he notes.
He provides examples for his contention. “In Tasker Town booth, which comprises largely of police personnel, there were around 600 voters. But that police quarters have been demolished now and the police have been shifted out, but the voter list has not been updated. Similarly in Vasanth Nagar ward, we have noted the names of more than 1,800 voters who have either died or shifted out.”
Prakash fears that this may lead to bogus voting. He adds, “Those people who have applied for new voter cards have not received it even after 2-3 years. We have filed a detailed objection letter to the local election officer and we will be submitting another letter to the state election commission as well.”