The Hindu : National : The mess over missing names

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Apr 29, 2004

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National

The mess over missing names

By Kalpana Sharma

MUMBAI, APRIL 28. On April 26, scores of Mumbai's prominent citizens could not vote, as their names did not appear on the electoral rolls. Media attention on their plight has exposed a much bigger problem. In every constituency in the city, hundreds have complained that their names did not appear on the lists, though they were registered voters.

The Chief Electoral Officer of Maharashtra, Mr. R. K. Bhargava, insists that the problem is limited to Mumbai; he says he has not received complaints from elsewhere in the State.

A day after the polling, all the major political parties in the State have registered complaints with the Election Commission. The Samajwadi Party is considering filing a case in the court. The Bharatiya Janata Party has demanded an immediate inquiry that will include in its ambit the agencies that prepared the final list. Gurudas Kamat of the Congress, who is contesting from Mumbai North East, told The Hindu that his party had sent complaints to the State election office and to the EC in Delhi. He admitted that political parties should have ensured that all eligible voters were registered. But the Government machinery responsible for the ``goof up'' cannot be excused.

Mr. Kamat said that the problem might have arisen because, with the use of electronic voting machines, the number of voters per polling booth was raised from 1,000 to 1,500. As a result, the numbering had changed and people could not locate their booths. At the same time, the process of enumeration was faulty, he said. Even if enumerators were denied access to some buildings, the names of those already registered could not be unilaterally struck off, as had been done this time, he said. In every constituency, all the names in some buildings were missing. In some cases, people living on a few floors were registered and the others were not.

In the sitting MP Sunil Dutt's Mumbai North West constituency, his election agents alleged that over a lakh voters were not on the list, though they had voter identity cards.

Gerson Da Cunha from AGNI (Action for Good Governance in India), which had carried out a vigorous voter registration campaign before the election, said that it was a citizen's responsibility to ensure that his name was on the rolls.

At the same time, he held the State responsible for the information on the revision of electoral rolls not reaching the voters. His own organisation "learnt by sheer accident that the summary revision was underway." This propelled them into action; they set up a helpline and fielded up to 400 calls a day from potential voters.

Mr. Bhargava said that his office did what it could. It was evaluating the problem and would try and rectify things before the Assembly elections due later this year.

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