Election Commission to look into YSRC’s complaints about voter elimination from rolls in 15 days

Andhra Pradesh chief electoral officer Gopalakrishna Dwivedi promised on Friday to inquire into the complaints of YSRC party over the alleged elimination of 40 lakh voters unsympathetic to the ruling TDP within two weeks.

Leader of opposition YS Jaganmohan Reddy is scheduled to meet Governor ESL Narasimhan at Raj Bhavan in Hyderabad on Saturday over the issue.

Jagan Reddy had requested chief election commissioner of India Sunil Arora at a meeting in Delhi on February 4 to take a fresh look at the published rolls and re-include the voters eliminated allegedly at the behest of the ruling Telegu Desam Party.

Dwivedi conducted an all-party meeting at the secretariat with the left parties, the Yuvajana Sramika Rytu Congress and the ruling TDP to seek suggestions on conducting free and fair polling in 2019.

YSRC leader Ambati Rambabu stressed the need for the poll body to set the record straight by addressing the alleged goof-ups in the electoral rolls. The goof-ups included bogus voters with fake identities and deletion of voters who could vote against the ruling party, he said at the all-party meeting.

Rambabu accused the TDP of being jittery of its prospects of winning the election this year and tampering with the electoral rolls. He recalled a thin margin of 1.8% of vote share with which it came to power in 2014.

Former YSRC minister Botsa Satyanarayana had met Dwivedi in January and claimed he had caught some people belonging to a private agency allegedly hired by the ruling party at two places in Vizianagaram district red-handed while trying to delete voters from the lists by accessing data on tabs.

Dwivedi said a token system will be introduced during the polling to ensure voters exercise their franchise on the first-cum-first-serve basis without having to wait in queues for longer durations as is the case during the previous elections.

He said a team from the election commission will visit the state on February 11 and 12.

He said 1.15 lakh electronic voting machines are readily available enabling 3.69 crore voters to take part in the polling. The devices are being subjected to trials in the first phase in the districts.

In addition to the 3.69 crore voters, the state election commission has received 9 lakh applications for inclusion in the lists as fresh voters. Close to 18 lakh young voters are poised to take part in the polling for the first time in the 2019 general elections, Dwivedi explained.