Dead, migrated Bengalureans still on rolls: What’s up with BBMP’s voter list?

The city has never crossed a voter turnout of above 60% in the last two decades. The BBMP can fix the problem by cleaning up the voter list.

It has been a few years since Raghavendra’s* sister and her family moved out of the country. Yet, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike’s (BBMP) new draft voter roll lists them in the same house where they were living in Nandini Layout, for rent. Elsewhere, people find the names of their dead relatives still on the voter roll.

Duplicate voter entries, dead voters in the list, people who migrated out not getting deleted, and mass deletion of voters without physical verification—these are some of the problems that have plagued BBMP’s voter list in the past. Despite people complaining and activists highlighting issues, some of the issues continue to persist.

Read | Bengaluru: Migrated, dead people still on BBMP’s rolls

Under pressure from the High Court that is asking for municipality elections, the BBMP published its latest voter list on August 25. The last date to file objections was September 9. The final voter roll will be published on September 22, as per the timeline.

The time period given to file objections coincided with the flood and rains. The BBMP has received only about 1,000 objections in 15 days, says Umesh D S, Assistant Commissioner (Election), BBMP.

Misleading web

The BBMP has published the draft voter roll on its website, but people were unable to figure out their names easily.

Those who had Electoral Photo ID Card (EPIC) numbers could search their polling station, ward and constituency details on the website - knowyourbooth.in. However, those who shifted to Bengaluru after 2019 and had given their names for addition to the voter list, but were unsure if they have been added or not, suffered the most. Those whose names were spelled incorrectly on BBMP’s list also faced issues in finding their names without EPIC. They had to check the draft voter list sections carefully and click links after links.

The draft voter lists have a map section in every file uploaded, but they are invisible and unclear due to the poor quality of scanning, making it difficult for the citizens to find their booth boundaries.

The problem partly lies in the BBMP web redesigning work that is still incomplete. While the website pages are getting finalised the search results on web mislead people to old websites and voter lists. There are instances of people checking the 2020 draft voter list that was available online, which had different ward numbers, and getting confused. When DH brought these to the BBMP’s notice, the officials were quick to rectify some of the problems.

There are possibilities of some of the ward boundaries changing ahead of voting, due to the objections submitted on ward delimitation. However, there will be a polling booth in the vicinity, and having the name on the roll is more important than knowing the ward, says Raghavendra H S, Programme Lead, Bangalore Political Action Committee (B.PAC).

Problems aplenty

“Bengaluru has a lot of moving population, who keep shifting between constituencies and wards. For them Voter Helpline app is a boon,” says Raghavendra. However, this is not without its own problems.

Limits on time and file size have inconvenienced the voters. When someone searches for voter ID, the app asks for age, which is pointless, says Anand Thirtha, a B.PAC member who worked on voter registrations. When EPIC is generated, there is no SMS intimation, and people have to check the app itself. Such an SMS will make life easy for voters, he adds.

People aged above 21 registering as voters for the first time need to submit a form declaring that they are not registered elsewhere. “This form needs to be downloaded, signed, canned/photographed and uploaded again. When everything is online, what is the point of manual submissions?” he asks, adding that such processes also must be digital.

People can get their names deleted or transferred by filing applications using the relevant forms. The Central Election Commission finds duplications using a software that identifies demographically or photographically similar entries which is communicated to the BBMP which are deleted with the consent of the voter, after the BLOs verify it.

“Booth-level officers sometimes mark applications as rejected due to inadequate documents. The voters do not get a chance to know why it was rejected,” says Anand Thirtha. BLO system needs to be strengthened, he adds, saying that sometimes people listed as BLOs do not pick calls or say they are not BLOs.

“BLOs are supposed to visit every home to verify the voter list, but that’s not happening in reality,” says Raghavendra. This is why people who have migrated and died still remain in the voter list.

However, Umesh asserts that BBMP does not delete any entries suo motu. There are only two ways to delete a dead person—through the death certificate data the Statistics Department provides, and when relatives file for deletion along with proof. In both cases, BLOs are supposed to visit homes and verify it before the deletion.

Though not compulsory, weeding out duplicates is easier when the EPIC is linked with Aadhaar, says Umesh, adding that only 9% of voters in BBMP limits have linked their voter IDs with Aadhaar. He adds that 11 documents such as PAN cards, passports and other government-given documents are also accepted for authentication.

Amid all these problems, there have only been a little over 23,600 visits to the BBMP’s voter roll search website. “Voters do not care now when they are asked to check and file objections. They will raise a ruckus only on the voting day,” said an official.

“Youths do not show interest to register as new voters, they say they are not aware of the process,” says Raghavendra.

Bengaluru’s voting percentage (since 2008)

2008 Assembly polls: 51%
2009 Lok Sabha polls: 58.81%
2010 BBMP polls: 44.04 %
2013 Assembly polls: 57.33%
2014 Lok Sabha polls: 54%
2015 BBMP polls: 49.31%
2018 Assembly polls 51%
2019 Lok Sabha polls: 54.13%

Bloated roll and poor turnout

Bengaluru’s voter turnout has been projected as low in previous elections. This is partly because the voter list is bloated with superfluous and invalid entries, which increase the base number against which the percentage of turnout is calculated. For example, if the turnout is 44% with the voter list having 15% of invalid entries, it is actually equivalent to 44 people voting out of 85, not out of 100.

“Anything that affects the quality of voter roll knowingly or unknowingly will ultimately affect the overall quality of the discourse. The government ends up focusing on campaigns to promote voter turnout, and spends a lot of public money without fixing the bloated voter list and knowing the actual number of voters,” says P G Bhat, an army veteran who has worked for voter list reforms in the past.

He gives the example of his own area where people who have old properties and moved out to other states and countries co-exist in the voter list, along with people who died five years ago. Proxy voting is usually facilitated by such entries, he adds.

How clean the BBMP’s final voter list will be this time remains to be seen.