It was 11.40 am on May 4 when a few persons knocked on the door of Srinivas Kodali in Hyderabad’s Miyapur, which comes under the Serilingampally Assembly constituency. A man identified as Suresh, who claimed to be a Booth Level Officer (BLO), asked for details like name, phone number, address, voter ID card, and the number of family members in the house.
Srinivas, who is also an activist and familiar with the activities of the Election Commission of India (ECI), immediately suspected that the visitor was not a BLO as claimed. Further, when Srinivas insisted that he show his credentials, the man did not have a valid identity card. When confronted with more questions, Suresh said that he had been sent by the local corporator, Uppalapati Srikanth, who belongs to the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) party. Srinivas filmed this conversation and shared it on Twitter, expressing shock at the illegal collection of citizen data.
Srinivas filed a complaint with the Miyapur police the same day seeking an investigation into the matter. In his complaint, Srinivas wrote, “...few agents posing as official Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation officers started going door to door collecting personal details of people. One of the agents showed a photo (not original). When asked to call the Electoral Registration Officer, he called one Manikanta who claimed to be from the office of the Miyapur corporator.”
TNM followed up on the case and verified with the Election Registration Officer (ERO) T Venkanna, who is also the Deputy Commissioner of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation, whether the said man was associated with the ECI. The ERO sent the video of the alleged BLO to officers in the Chandanagar unit and after two days of internal inquiry, he confirmed that the man in the video was not a BLO. “We checked with our staff and nobody recognised him. Certainly, he is not associated with ECI,” ERO Venkanna said.
A BLO is a grassroots official who has to be a resident of the same area as the polling station he is assigned to. A BLO has to be a government, quasi-government or retired government servant.
TNM also checked with the Miyapur police if they have registered a case in the matter. Inspector N Thirupathi Rao refused to share any details. According to Srinivas, he has not received any update from the police station and has decided to escalate the issue by seeking the intervention of the Cyberabad Police Commissioner.
The alleged illegal data collection assumes significance as the state is scheduled to go to the polls in December. Serilingampally is represented by MLA Arakepudi Gandhi of the BRS.
When TNM reached out to Corporator Uppalapati Srikanth, he did not offer any clarity on whether he sent the persons to carry out the exercise. He said that such data collection was allowed. However, though all political parties do collect voter data and engage agencies for the same, the person who went to Srinivas’s house pretended to be a BLO.
In its investigation in the neighboring Karnataka, TNM had reported about how attempts to delete voters – particularly those belonging to the Muslim community – were made by the Bharatiya Janata Party, the party in power then, in the run-up to the elections.