Verify multiple voters at same address: CEO

HYDERABAD: Telangana chief electoral officer Vikas Raj has asked district election officers to verify the addresses or door numbers having multiple voters like more than 10 in one place.
Vikas Raj said a campaign is being taken up across the state to verify the door numbers having a big number of voters. He said that certain apartments got the same door number for all flats and some buildings with multiple portions got the same door number, due to which voter numbers are more.
Raising one such instance, former MP and BJP leader Konda Vishweshwar Reddy said 28 voters of different religions are living in a two-room tenement and one bathroom shed in Serilingampally assembly constituency and accused BRS of fake voter enrolment. “There are around 70,000 or more fake voters. Response of ECI officials in Telangana is poor when we identified thousands of such fake voters,” Konda alleged.
In a complaint to Rangareddy DEO, a local Maraboina Ravi Kumar Yadav said: “I have given electoral list of Serilingampally constituency with 1,277 entries which do not reveal mandatory information and other details like father’s name or husband’s name. The entries are bogus.”
Reacting to the complaint, Vikas Raj said: “We will verify this specific case and take action if it is true.”
He further said: “We have been weeding out photo similar entries. Last year, we weeded out 10 lakh photo similar entries. We are also working on demographic details for similar entries. Overall, 14 lakh entries were deleted from the rolls. We have been rectifying the electoral rolls on a regular basis and action is being taken on various complaints.”
While rectification of electoral rolls is done at the state level using the software provided by ECI, the photo similar entries are deleted based on the inputs sent by the ECI.
Vikas Raj said: “On the ERO-Net, we purify the voter lists by using the software every three months where demographically similar entries are deleted. In Telangana, we did door-to-door survey of these entries and after taking the consent of voters, we deleted duplications.”
Duplication is more in urban areas as people move from one house to another on rentals. “When they go to a new place, they apply for a new voter card and do not bother about applying for deletion of old vote. Around 50 per cent of the photo similar entries are from the GHMC area,” he added.