By Express News Service
Published: 30th June 2015 05:03 AM
VISAKHAPATNAM: Shocked that over 9.21 lakh voters were missing in the Aadhaar linkage with the Electoral Photo Identity Cards (EPIC) in Visakhapatnam district, the district administration is gearing up to re-verify voter lists. The identification of legitimate voters has become crucial to conduct municipal elections in Vizag, considering the thin margin of victory secured by the TDP over the YSR Congress candidates in the general elections.
The district administration recently undertook linking of Aadhaar cards with the EPICs for verification of voters and their residences. To their astonishment, they found that about 9.21 lakh voters out of 34 lakh registered in the district are not residing at the addresses mentioned in their EPIC/Aadhaar cards. As the elections GVMC are due, the issue became a hot topic in the city. Speaking on the issue, district collector N Yuvaraj said that the missing voters would lose their right to vote, unless they link their Aadhaar card with the voter IDs.
All the political parties are very keenly observing these developments and assessing their prospects in the ensuing GVMC elections. As the lion’s share of missing voters is in the GVMC limits, all the parties - the TDP, YSRC, Congress, BJP and Left parties - are devising strategies to deal with challenges arising from the deletion of names from the voters list.
Meanwhile, the government employees conducted a door-to-door survey and verified whether the voters were residing at the said addresses. During the visits, they collected the copy of the Aadhaar card of the voters. Surprised over the huge gap, the district administration has decided to extend the time till June 30 and asked the voters to confirm their current addresses by linking their voter ID cards with the Aadhaar details.
“We expected the difference to be around 1.5 to 2 lakh voters, but unavailability of over 9.21 lakh voters at their registered addresses was unheard of. There are several allegations on the sudden rise in the number of voters in various Assembly constituencies, particularly during the 2014 elections. In view of the new results, we are planning to conduct another round of door-to-door surveys to confirm the number of missing voters,” a senior revenue official said. Among the missing 9.21 lakh voters, the district administration has found that about 47,000 voters registered their names in two places, 56,000 voters died and 2,962 voters are not eligible to exercise their franchise. It is suspected that about five lakh voters changed their houses and the houses of the remaining voters were found locked during the door-to-door survey. In fact, Yuvaraj convened an all-party meeting and requested parties to cooperate in the linkage of Aadhaar card with voter IDs. He also requested the political parties to take up a massive campaign at polling booth-level to trace the missing voters.
Responding, YSR Congress district president Gudivada Amarnath said that it was not a surprise for the Opposition party. “Before the 2014 elections itself, we raised an alarm about thousands of voters being transported to Visakhapatnam city, particularly the Visakhapatnam East constituency for enrolment of their names in the voters list. But the officials turned a deaf ear, which favoured the TDP,” he alleged. A former Congress MLA said that, “we cannot blame anyone as the state was embroiled in the bifurcation issue. Some leaders took advantage of the situation to ensure that they enrol the names of their people, notwithstanding the state bifurcation or otherwise.”