HYDERABAD: Despite the hue and cry over the missing names in voters’ lists of 15 Assembly constituencies in the city, the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation has enrolled about 40 lakh voters in the electoral list. Surprisingly, the enumeration was made on the basis of the 2011 Census, which says the population is 40 lakh.
The population has grown vastly since then and there have been several deletions due to deaths or families moving away. Yet, the number of voters and population has remained the same. Officials claimed that they had made desperate attempts to bring down the number of voters to 40 lakh or else the list would have crossed 50 lakh.
Facing ire from political parties, the corporation has listed the number of voters at 40 lakh since the former have threatened of protests in case the number decreased further. According to the data collected from the office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India, during 2011 the city’s population was 39,43,323 (20,18,575 male, 19,24,748 female) in the 15 Assembly constituencies in Hyderabad district. Data obtained from the Registrar of Births and Deaths shows that Hyderabad district recorded 1.22 lakh deaths between 2014 and July 2018.
The civic body in September has published 38,61,009 names in the draft electoral rolls. After adding 1,50,829 names and deleting 51,132, the civic body published the final draft with 39,60,706 voters with a difference of 17,383 when compared with the population.
A highly placed source in the corporation alleged that the civic body in order to cover up the birth and deaths data had removed the names of eligible voters. Sources said that even though the population had increased manifold since 2011, the births and deaths are in the core city which is well within the geographical boundaries of 15 Assembly constituencies.
Moreover, the door-to-door enumeration was handed over to either third party agencies or outsourced employees. The corporation in order to take up the regular maintenance activities neglected the door-to-door enumeration, and thousands of eligible voters paid for this by not finding their names in the voters’ lists.
“If given a choice the corporation could have deleted about one lakh duplicate votes, 60,000 deaths and included the names of all eligible voters in the city. At the last moment in order keep the voters’ list at par with the Census the corporation removed the names of voters to whom the Electoral Photo ID Cards (EPIC) cards were given and those who had voted during the previous elections,” a source said.
A senior GHMC official on condition of anonymity said that the population census carried out in 2011 was wrong. He said that the city had more than 50 lakh population at that time, and the exercise was badly hit by the 42-day Sakala Janula Samme strike during the Telangana statehood agitation.
The official said that it had become a herculean job to bring down the voters’ list to about 40 lakh with a current population of more than 60 lakh. He said that the authorities were under tremendous pressure from the political parties pertaining to deletion and addition of names, which had also affected the polling percentage in the city.
However, the official said that the corporation during the Lok Sabha polls will use Nazri Naksha issued by the Election Commission of India (ECI) to enhance the accuracy and transparency in the electoral list.
According to the guidelines issued by the ECI, Nazri Naksha is an ordinary sketch map of the polling area prepared by the BLO demarcating the geographical boundaries of the polling area and depicting settlements (habitation area), streets, roads, lakes, rivers, important buil-dings like polling stations.
