Reorganisation of addresses led to goof-up in TN list: EC

The Election Commission, which takes its roll as a monitor of the elections rather seriously, was never more embarrassed as when names of le...

The Election Commission, which takes its roll as a monitor of the elections rather seriously, was never more embarrassed as when names of legitimate voters were found missing from electoral rolls in large numbers in Tamil Nadu during the Lok Sabha polls this year.

Now, the EC’s own probe seems to have discovered that reorganisation of streets and house numbers in 2000 led to the goof-up. To make the probe impartial, the Commission had appointed Chief Election Officer of Kerala P.J. Thomas to carry out the inquiry. The four-page report was submitted to Chief Election Commissioner T.S. Krishnamurthy today. Making it a political issue, the AIADMK had claimed that 43 lakh genuine voters were deprived of their voting right this May.

Sources said though the report accepts the failure of computer software, which could not process the changes introduced during the reorganisation of records, it also finds fault with the Municipal authorities for complicating the numbering of houses and thereby affecting the revision of electoral rolls. As a result, names of legitimate voters were deleted from the electoral rolls as ‘‘bogus voters’’.

The report also pointed out that officials at the Tamil Nadu Election Commission did not have the time to revise the electoral rolls, taking into account the large-scale changes effected in the addresses. While conducting the inquiry, Thomas had received about 80,000 complaints of deletion. The EC had an uphill task of going into each complaint and had to carry out door-to-door surveys.