‘Holes’ in voter lists: EC comes under attack from BJP again

A controversy is brewing over the omission of names from the Gujarat voters list with the Election Commission maintaining that it had decide...

A controversy is brewing over the omission of names from the Gujarat voters list with the Election Commission maintaining that it had decided as early as August this year not to delete a single name from the state rolls.

Dismissing VHP leader Pravin Togadia’s charge that his name did not figure in the voters’ list, the EC said the names of Togadia and his family were listed in the electoral rolls of Naroda assembly constituency.

According to EC spokesperson A.N. Jha, the names of Togadia and his family figured at serial number 154 to 159 with residence at Vraj Colony in Kuber Nagar.

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A fax sent by the District Collector and Returning Officer (RO) for Ahmedabad, Sunaina Tomar, contained the Togadia family list—Togadia Pravinbhai Mohanbhai, Togadia Rashmikaben Pravinbhai, Togadia Vinodbhai Mohambhai, Togadia Gunvant Vitthalbhai and Togadia Sanjay Vitthalbhai. However, Togadia claimed he had left the area in 1995, and that the EC was trying to ‘‘cover up.’’ ‘‘I have been staying in Memnagar (in Sarkhej constituency) since 1995 and, during the 1998 election, gave my vote to Amit Shah, Sarkhej candidate and to L K Advani (from Gandhinagar constituency) in the Lok Sabha election. If my name was there in Naroda, I should have voted for Harin Pathak and Mayaben Kodnani in the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections respectively,’’ he said.

Meanwhile, the EC said the number of the voters in the state had increased by 15.5 pc from 1998 to 2002. “This shows an annual growth of 4 pc, which is well above the demographic trend of the country,’’ Jha said, hinting that there could not have been large-scale deletions from the list.

The EC had taken a decision against deletions after teams of senior officials, including CEC J M Lyngdoh, visited the state during the revision of rolls. The decision was meant to allow voters, who shifted homes due to the communal riots or other reasons, to exercise their franchise if they chose to.

So, even when over 2.24 lakh voters were not traced by the EC teams, every name was ‘provisionally’ included in the list. Some 1.76 lakh voters, who were traced to new places, were included in the voters’ list in their own polling stations.

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The revision of rolls began in Sept-Oct 2001 and the first draft was published in early Feb 2002. But this was followed by the communal riots across the state. When the final rolls were published after verification in May this year, it was found that a large number of people had shifted their original places of residence due to the disturbances.

After a house-to-house verification of the voters, those who were missing were either marked ‘S’ for shifted residences or ‘HDS’ for those whose residences were damaged in the riots.

‘‘There is a possibility that such voters might figure on two voters lists — one of their original place of residence and another of the new place of residence. But there is no possibility of legitimate voters names not being the rolls,’’ a senior EC official maintained.

The EC stated they were yet to receive any formal complaint of a large number of voters names missing from the lists. ‘‘We have just received two individual complaints from Kutch. But if any name is missing, it is very unfortunate,’’ Jha said.