The Telangana Congress on Monday decided to stage a protest against the state’s Election Commission, alleging that discrepancies in the electoral rolls of the state continued to exist, despite the party pointing out several issues.
“A decision was taken to hold a dharna on January 24, to protest against the failures of the Election Commission of India to take necessary steps in the preparation of the electoral rolls. Repeated representations were made to Election Commission of India (ECI) and submissions were made in the High Court about discrepancies in the voters list to the tune of about 70 lakh names. ECI had conceded that there were discrepancies and falsely claimed that the final voters list published for the Assembly elections will be corrected,” the Congress said in a press note.
Pointing out that Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Rajat Kumar had apologised for the mix-up after the elections, the Congress said, “This kind of an apology by a CEO for such lapses is the first in the history of Indian democracy.”
“There are several lakh voters with duplicate votes within the state and also in both Telangana and Andhra, the ECI has recently uploaded on their website, names of over 30 lakh voters deleted in 2015, under the guise of Aadhar linage in 36 urban Assembly constituencies in Telangana. These programmes were taken up on a pilot basis at the instance of TRS President and Chief Minister KCR to facilitate large scale deletion of names to get electoral advantage,” the Congress alleged.
“ECI is not at all serious about the preparation of a pure electoral roll and the promise to set things right will be hollow and empty, because of their deliberate attempts to cover up all the past irregularities, which were committed at the instance of the ruling TRS party,” the Opposition party in the Telangana Assembly added.
The Congress also said that their repeated demands to fix the irregularities were ignored.
“ECI has failed to take into consideration the ground realities,” the Congress said in its release.
The TRS had swept the polls held on December 7, winning 88 out of the 119-seat Assembly in the state, while the Congress won 19 seats.