Booth Level Officers are required to contact voters listed under the absent, shifted, dead and duplicate (ASDD) categories and facilitate submission of fresh enumeration forms. (DC File Photo)

Hyderabad: Close to a week after the Election Commission of India (ECI) allowed voters in the ASDD (absent, shifted, dead and duplicate) list, whose names had been deleted from the draft rolls, to submit enumeration forms afresh, there remains a major disconnect with booth level officers (BLOs) failing to reach out to them.

There are nearly 73 lakh voters in the ASDD list.

The ECI’s clear direction that the ASDD list should be pasted at polling stations has mostly been ignored.

As per the revised schedule, the claims and objections period will end on November 26 and final roll will be published on November 30.

At 21.7 per cent, Telangana is third among the states with the highest proportion of names in the ASDD list in Phase 3 of the special intensive revision of the electoral roll.

That means leaving 73,39,235 of 3,38,26,448 electors from the list.

Hyderabad district topped the state with 40.99 per cent of its voters in the ASDD list.

In districts, besides lack of clear directions, the officials have not received physical enumeration forms nor were they able to download them as the online provision was not enabled.

“The online provision is not working and we don’t have the physical forms,” said an official from Karimnagar.

The ECI on November 6 wrote to the Chief Electoral Officers of states, including Telangana, where the SIR was ongoing to ensure that booth-wise lists of ASDD voters were displayed afresh on the notice boards of respective polling stations and to upload them on CEO’s website in a readable PDF format.

The ECI also directed the officials to make all possible efforts to contact the ASDD voters through BLOs and ensure delivery of the enumeration forms.

Even during the recent of the Hyderabad district election officer with representatives of political parties, there were clear instructions to reach out to the ASDD voters.

However, the ground situation remains quite different.

“Not much effort is being made by electoral registration officers (EROs) or BLOs.

We have pressed for home visits, but they remain reluctant.

Only when the voter in ASDD list does not have enumeration form with her, a copy is being provided.

The ASDD list is not pasted at the booths,” said P. Rajesh Kumar, chairman of the TPCC Election Commission coordination committee.

Officials at CEO office have said that since most of the deleted voters under ASDD had applied for restoration of their votes through Form-6, the response was bleak.

It was expected that about 2 lakh ASDD voters may apply via enumeration forms.

“The special campaign earlier for Form 6 drew a bleak response,” said a higher official.

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