The post-SIR voter roll in Uttar Pradesh is throwing up curious surprises, calling into question the accuracy of a complicated exercise conducted with unusual haste in several states.
Rani Singh, 33, a resident of Aliganj East in Bundelkhand’s Banda, has found her name five times in the final voter list. According to the revised roll, she lives in five houses in the same locality.
Vinay Kumar, a resident of Mardan Naka East in Banda, didn’t know he had a next-door neighbour called Nusrat Siddiqui, whose name figures on the list.
Anjana Dubey, a voter from Akbarpur Raniya in the Akbarpur Lok Sabha constituency in the adjoining Kanpur Rural district, was flummoxed when she found Shekhu Khan sharing her residential address.
Khan, a member of the Samajwadi Party’s minority cell, claimed he had written to the officers concerned to rectify the mistake, but his application was ignored.
“We have been saying right from the beginning that the SIR is merely an exercise to delete the names of non-BJP voters. They didn’t delete my name because I was active and submitting one application after another. But they changed my address to create a dispute and take away my voting rights,” Khan said.
“The addresses of several of my family members who have made it to the final list are wrong. It shows that the SIR exercise was aimed at creating chaos and controversy. The common man fears speaking out against the Election Commission,” he said.
The names of around 1.19 lakh voters have been deleted in Banda district.
Vishwambhar Singh Yadav, the SP MLA from the Baberu Assembly seat in Banda, said: “A total of 32,299 voters were removed from the list in my constituency, and I can say with confidence that they were my voters. I had won against the BJP candidate
by a margin of around 7,300 votes in 2022. The BJP government is colluding with
the EC to snatch the seat from us illegally.”
Assistant district electoral officer (DEO) Kumar Dharmendra said the list was available at booth-level offices for a week. “Those who find a discrepancy in it can appeal to the competent authorities,” he said.
The people of Baghpat, Aligarh and Allahabad have made similar complaints.
People can file objections to the DEO within 15 days of publication of the voters’ list (till April 25). They have 30 days to move the second appeal to the chief electoral officer after the DEO’s order comes.
SP president Akhilesh Yadav said: “The SIR was aimed at deleting the voters instead of adding them. A large number of our voters were removed from the list in Kannauj, but they were not added despite our repeated representations to the officials. The EC has not cleansed the electoral roll; they have made it completely chaotic. This kind of chaos suits the BJP.”
“Only Dalit, OBC and Muslim voters have been removed from the list,” he added.
Over 2 crore names, or 13.24 per cent of the pre-SIR electorate, have been removed from Uttar Pradesh’s final voter list.