Date:12/12/2003 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2003/12/12/stories/2003121211920300.htm

Southern States - Andhra Pradesh-Hyderabad

Voters list: MCH left with task of tracking down dead

By T. Lalith Singh

HYDERABAD Dec. 11. These days, the Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad (MCH) seems to be busy tracking down the dead, literally.

Caught in a piquant situation with the high number of representations seeking inclusion of names in the voter list and very few for deletion, the civic authorities have started calling for records from graveyards located in different parts of the twin cities.

The MCH is also going through the records of the Births and Deaths Registration wing with a fine toothcomb to compile a list of the deceased and strike off their names from the voters list. Since the task of updating the voter list was taken up a fortnight ago, more than 1,48,000 representations were received for inclusion but less than 850 submissions were made for deletion.

Officials associated with the exercise complain of a lack of response to their appeal to the public to get their names excluded from the list when there was a shift of residence or when there was a death in the family. "People are keen to get the names of their daughters-in-law included but similar initiative is not there to delete the names of daughters who got married and moved out," he says.

The MCH Additional Commissioner (Elections), T. Muralidhar, has also cautioned citizens about getting enlisted as a voter in more than one constituency. "It's an offence that attracts penal provisions," he warns.

The MCH has set up 3,856 centres in the 13 Assembly constituencies that fall under its jurisdiction. Going by the high turnout for appending names, officials expect to receive at least a couple of lakh more representations by the time the exercise comes to a close on December 15.

After the deadline, MCH is to take up scrutiny of all claims and plans to deploy constituency-wise teams to check the high number of applications. "We intend taking up a thorough field verification before appending the names into the final list," asserts Mr. Muralidhar.

Last time when the civic body took up an intensive campaign to revise the poll list in October 2001, it had deleted 15 lakh names and included 17 lakh new ones. As on January 1, 2003, there were 39 lakh voters spread over 13 Assembly constituencies that come within the MCH jurisdiction.