Hyderabad: The Election Commission of India on Friday informed the Hyderabad High Court that there have been no en-mass deletion of voters by the commission after October 2015 and there will not be any such deletions, except on individual applications, till completion of the GHMC elections.
Avinash Desai, counsel for the EC, made the submission before Justice C.V. Nagarjuna Reddy while hearing pleas by Feroze Khan of the TD and Nagesh Mudiraj of the Congress, seeking to direct the TS government, GHMC and the State Election Commission not to publish the final electoral roll ward-wise with BC voters till a final decision was taken with regard to the alleged illegal deletion of 6.39 lakh voters from the electoral rolls.
The petitioners contended that the process of reservation for the BC category was done without finalising the issue of deletion of 6.3 lakh voters.
The judge had asked the Election Commission of India to give its final decision on the issue and the GHMC had prepared a list of 7.9 lakh voters to be deleted in the name of double entries. The petitioners said that these voters were being clandestinely removed and feared the composition of voters will change.
Counsel for the EC said that it was true that 7.9 lakh voters were identified for deletion as they were found to be duplicate, and the EC will delete these voters from the electoral rolls after the local body polls (GHMC) are completed.
While disposing of the petitions by recording the statement of EC’s counsel, the judge said that the court did not go into the issue of legality of retaining admittedly the 7. 9 lakh double entry of voters, as it was beyond the scope of the writ petitions.
Elsewhere, Justice Nagarjuna Reddy on Friday asked the State Election Commission to look into a complaint lodged by MBT leader Amjedullah Khan regarding voters of Azampura being shown as voters of Chawni division.
He told the court that the voters belonging to Azampura were shown as voters of Chawni and the voters of Akbar Bagh shown as voters of Azampura. The judge permitted the petitioner to file any other material with more specific details to the SEC and asked the commission to dispose of the case within three days after that.
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