Plea filed in Supreme Court to rectify errors in Telangana electoral rolls

HYDERABAD: Senior Congress leader Marri Shashidhar Reddy on Wednesday moved the Supreme Court with a plea to take urgent steps to rectify the defects in the electoral rolls of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh states. Alleging large scale discrepancies to the extent of about 70 lakh voters in the rolls, he urged the Apex Court to set aside the order of the state chief electoral officer in advancement of special summary revision of photo electoral rolls in Telangana, vide notification dated Sept 8, 2018.

Shashidhar Reddy, in his petition, submitted that the Election Commission had stopped the special summary revision with reference to Jan 1, 2019 as the qualifying date, and took up the second special summary revision taking the qualifying date as Jan 1, 2018 rather than Jan 1, 2019, and published the draft roll on Sept 10 this year. The process has been truncated from four months to four weeks and final list to be published on Oct 8. Any election held with ‘inaccurate’ electoral rolls will be fraud with the people of the state, he added.

The matter is expected to come up for hearing next week. Senior Supreme Court advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi will appear for Reddy.

Talking to Express, Reddy who is the chairman of TPCC election commission coordination committee, said that the discrepancies in respect of 70 lakh voters, names of over 30 lakhs were deleted on the pretext that they have left for AP. However, the same have not been added in the voters list of AP. He wanted the Apex court to issue directions to the authorities of election commission for immediate rectification of the defects in the electoral rolls of both AP and Telangana.