Congress alleges discrepancies in Telangana voter list

The Congress on Sunday alleged that there are discrepancies in the Telangana voter list and sought the intervention of the Election Commission of India (ECI) in the "strongest possible manner".

Addressing the media, Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said, "The problem of duplicates, deleted votes and disqualified voters is far more acute in Telangana than could have been imagined."

He claimed that there are at least 30.13 lakh duplicate voters in the state, while names of nearly 20 lakh voters have been deleted from the electoral rolls between 2014 and 2018 on the pretext that they have left for Andhra Pradesh. The Congress leader also alleged that names of around 18 lakh voters are found in the electoral rolls of both the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

Seeking the intervention of the ECI in the matter, Singhvi said, "The Election Commission which is charged under Article 324 of the Constitution with ensuring the sanctity of voter rolls, cannot choose to be a silent spectator on this grave issue." The party also demanded a thorough process of "verification and sanitisation of these voter rolls" before the announcement of elections.

"Any election held on the basis of these deeply and deliberately flawed and inaccurate voter lists would undermine the entire process and would lead to a distorted mandate. It will not only further deepen the doubts of the common electorate in the electoral process owing to such glaring anomalies, but will further erode the faith that the people of this country need to have in the institution of Election Commission," Singhvi stressed.

He further said that Congress demands that the "ECI should go all out to restore the dwindling faith by proactively attending to concerns of all the stakeholders in any election". "Failing which like many other institutions, another institution of impeccable integrity would lose its credibility permanently under the decidedly and designedly subversion being undertaken in this dark Modi Era," he added.

Singhvi also attacked Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhara Rao and termed the dissolution of the state assembly a "travesty". "By dissolving the Assembly early, (Chief Minister) K Chandrasekhara Rao has interfered with the process whereby these discrepancies and inaccuracies would have been corrected. After publishing the revised electoral roll on September 10, 2018 the public and other political parties have been given a mere four weeks to identify and highlight these issues (by October 8, 2018)," he added.

Though the election for the Telangana assembly would have been held in June next year, Rao decided to go for early polls and dissolved the state assembly earlier this month, necessitating the constitution of a new government. The ECI is yet to announce the poll schedule.