30 lakh voters common to AP and Telangana, ECI order awaited

HYDERABAD: Andhra Pradesh chief electoral officer (CEO) Gopal Krishna Dwivedi has written to the Election Commission of India (ECI) seeking action on complaints from various political parties that there are nearly 30 lakh votes that are common to both the Telangana and Andhra Pradesh electoral rolls.

Though elections to the Lok Sabha in Telangana and AP as well as Assembly polls in Andhra are slated to be held on the same day (April 11), political parties have expressed apprehensions that people whose names figure in both the electoral rolls can vote in both the states. “I have written to the ECI regarding the duplicate votes. We are awaiting the EC orders,” Dwivedi told TOI.

AP has deleted 1.44 lakh votes. When the issue was raised before the 2018 Telangana assembly polls, then Chief Election Commissioner O P Rawat had said the de-duplication software would be run on electoral rolls of both the states. Asked about it, Telangana CEO Rajat Kumar said: “Though we have not detected any duplicate names, political parties have lodged complaints that several such names exist in the electoral rolls of Telangana and AP. We have many physical mechanisms to prevent duplicate voting, the indelible ink being one of them. As of now, we do not propose to do anything and any call on this has to be taken by the ECI.”