EC releases final list of voters in AP; No en-masse deletions

The Election Commission has released the final voters' list in Andhra Pradesh which showed deletion of about 1.41 lakh names, contrary to charges traded by ruling TDP and opposition YSR Congress about largescale removals and bogus entries in recent months.

According to the list released by the state Chief Electoral Officer Gopal Krishna Dwivedi, as of March 22 the total number of electorate was 3,91,81,399 comprising 1,93,82,068 male, 1,97,95,423, women and 3,908 transgenders.

The state will have a single phase polling on April 11 for the 175-member assembly and 25 Lok Sabha seats.

A total of 1,41,822 names of voters were deleted from the electoral rolls between January 11 and March 21, the CEO said in a statement.

The deletions related to death, shifting, missing cases and repeat entries in the list.

The number of voters was 3,69,33,091 when the rolls were first published on January 11 after a special summary revision.

Subsequently, 22,48,308 voters were added till March 15, thereby taking the total number to 3,91,81,399, the CEO said.

Guntur district accounted for the highest number of deletions (35,603) followed by East Godavari (24,190).

The lowest deletions (2,407) was in Visakhapatnam district, according to data released by the CEO.

The main opposition YSR Congress had petitioned the EC alleging that there were over 56 lakh bogus or duplicate entries of voters in the rolls and sought their deletion.

As a counter, the ruling Telugu Desam Party alleged the YSRC had submitted fake petitions using Form-7 to get names of genuine voters deleted from the list.

Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu had claimed that names of eight lakh voters had been deleted.

"A person from Bihar has been acting as a consultant of the YSRC. Eight lakh TDP votes have been deleted," he had said adding that Form-7 was used for this.

"Looks like they will remove even my vote," Naidu had tweeted on March 4.

The state government had constituted a Special Investigation Team headed by an Inspector General of Police to probe into the "en masse" submission of form-7 applications and 400 FIRs had been rgistered in various police stations across the state on the issue.

Official sources have earlier said over 9.5 lakh applications in form-7 for deletion were received but more than 85 per cent of them were rejected as being fake.

Of the remaining applications, 1,41,822 votes have been removed from the rolls.

"No vote has been deleted due to fake Form-7 applications and more than 400 FIRs have been lodged against the culprits, the CEO said.

Of the total votes deleted, 68,422 were cases of death and 64,083 repeat entries.

Another 8,698 shifted to other places while 480 voters were reported missing, said the EC data.