Voters in Hyderabad, Sitapur in UP and Gujarat villages express dismay at the denial of an opportunity to cast votes.
Waquar Hasan | Clarion India
NEW DELHI — Activists and concerned citizens have alleged that the names of scores of Muslim voters have been deleted from electoral rolls in several parts of the country as the fourth phase of polling got underway on Monday.
On Sunday, Syed Qudubuddin Masood, a social activist in Telangana, wrote to the electoral registration officials in Hyderabad’s Bahadurpura alleging that the names of his and other ten family members were deleted from the voters’ list depriving them of their fundamental right to vote in the 2024 general elections.
“Upon my recent attempt to obtain a voter slip from the area BLO (booth level officer), I discovered to my dismay that my name was inexplicably absent from the electoral list. Subsequently, on the night of 11th May 2024, I was informed that my name had been deleted from the electoral list (Part No. 56) without any prior notice. It’s imperative to note that I have consistently exercised my voting rights, and have cast my vote in the state election in 2023. Furthermore, my residency at the aforementioned address spans nearly four decades,” wrote Maqsood, reports reaching here said on Monday.
Calling the deletion of the names “illegal”, he said that the ones whose names were deleted beside him were his wife, mother, and brothers.
Masood urged the Election Commission officials to provide reasons and grounds for the deletion of names from the electoral rolls and the name and designation of the responsible officer who took suo moto action in this matter. He also sought to know whether any field-level inquiry was conducted before the deletion of the names and copies of the notices and inquiry notes submitted by the concerned officer for deletion if any.
Last month, the Election Commission in Hyderabad informed that the officials deleted the names of over 5.40 lakh people from the electoral rolls.
Like Hyderabad, there is an allegation of deletion of the names of Muslims in the entire locality in Uttar Pradesh’s Sitapur. Taking to X, Alok Verma, an activist from the Indian National Congress, posted: “Entire Muslim locality has been deleted from the voter’s list of our village in Sitapur, UP”.
It happened in Mahmudabad village’s Meera Nagar. Verma’s tweet has gone viral on X with concerned people demanding a probe into the issue.
“Such complaints should be investigated by @ECISVEEP and the public should be told what has happened. Disenfranchising one community today will make every community vulnerable in the future. That’s how dictatorships evolve,” posted Congress leader Salman Soz.
Earlier, it was reported that the names of around 700 fishermen, almost all of them Muslims, were removed from the voters’ list in Gujarat’s Devbhumi Dwarka district. These fishermen operate in Gandhvi and Navadra villages and their homes were demolished by the authorities in March last year on the pretext that they were built on “encroached” land.
Gafoor Pateliya, a leader of the fishermen, said that out of around 350 fishermen who were registered voters in Gandhvi, the names of around 347 have been deleted from the electoral rolls. “Only three names have been retained while the rest have been deleted. Similarly, out of 225 voters in Navadra, the names of 224 have been deleted”.
An Election Commission official was cited by media reports as saying that the names were deleted after following due process.
