Telangana polls: Verify voters' list, Congress tells Election Commission
Hyderabad: The issue of the voters’ list is turning up the political heat, with the Congress alleging that there are 48 lakh fake voters in Telangana state and the names of 20 lakh voters have been deleted. The Congress alleged that the TRS government had tried to remove voters from the list in the GHMC elections too.
Speaking to media persons in Delhi on Sunday, Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said, “While Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has rushed to announce the dates for the Telangana Assembly elections, he has deliberately chosen to ignore the numerous discrepancies in the voter lists which disenfranchise lakhs of eligible voters and completely erode the integrity of the elections.
On a preliminary examination it has emerged that the problem of duplicates, deleted votes and disqualified voters is far more acute than could have been imagined. Close to 70 lakh voters are found to be falling in these three categories.”
He added, “In fact, it must be noted, that the KCR’s government in 2015 ordered the Chief Electoral Officer to delete 15 lakh names from the voters list for the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation elections. The purpose behind such a deletion was to disenfranchise those individuals who did not vote for TRS. The exercise was stopped by the Election Commission, after an investigation, upon a complaint by the Congress exposing the illegality of these efforts which also resulted in the transfer of the municipal commissioner. Now, by dissolving the Assembly early, KCR has interfered with the process whereby these discrepancies and inaccuracies would have been corrected.
