Your chance to make it to the voters’ list has expired. With 18 days to go for the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) elections, the list would neither be revised nor corrected,before the March 28 polls, electoral authorities have said.
Activists participating in voter enrollment drives are angry and helpless. “The summary revision was to take place till January 1,
2010. However, the voters who have applied for the inclusion of names eight months ago are still waiting to see their names in the voters’ list,” said Prithvi Reddy of SmartVote.
He claimed that the list was last updated on January 1, 2009. “Stateelection commission officials had told us that the voters’ list would be updated 10 days before the elections,” he said.
However, deputy commissioner MK Aiyappa said that the list was updated three days ago. “People can apply for inclusion of names till March 15. However, we must see till when the list can be updated,” the official said. On the errors in the list, the state election commission said that it was not responsible for rectifying them. “The assistant revenue officers of BBMP have done the ward-wise survey and prepared the list,”said the commission secretary, DK Ravindranath.
He said sufficient time had been given to the public to check and apply for the correction. “The updated list was put on the website on October 15. Since then about 10 lakh people have visited our website,” he said.
Explaining why errors occurred, Prithvi Reddy said that the voters’ list was prepared with the help of the GIS system. If the population of an area exceeded a particular number, the names were either removed or moved to a different polling booth.
He said that they had also found that 44% of the 60 lakh voters’ names posted on BBMP website did not have EPIC (Electoral Photo Identity Card) number. “People will find it difficult to search for their names and polling booths because of this,” he added.
Reddy said that there should be public audit of the voters’ list. If the lists were published, the chances of duplication of names could be avoided.
Ravindranath said typographical errors would not pose hurdles. “The entry in the list will be checked against the voter’s identity proof,” he said.
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