Congress Urges ECI to Verify Duplicate Voter Registrations in Telangana's SIR

Congress spokesperson Sama Ram Mohan Reddy on Saturday, July 11, urged the Election Commission to consider including the names of voters who are currently not residing in Telangana in the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR). He was speaking on the lines of a meeting between the ECI and the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) delegation in New Delhi, during which an appeal was made to verify suspected duplicate voter registrations in the state. The delegation led by parliamentary party leader Vaddiraju Ravichandra, former MP B Vinod Kumar, and party general secretary Soma Bharath Kumar submitted a memorandum claiming that there are, on average, 16,243 such entries in each Assembly constituency in Telangana and requested their elimination from the list. Citing the mass voter deletion in West Bengal SIR, Sama Ram Mohan Reddy opined that the ECI should check facts and ensure voter rights are protected. “They (ECI) did the same mistake in West Bengal and we have seen the repercussions of it. Just because of the reason that they are not residing in the place of the addresses mentioned in their voter list doesn’t mean that they enrolled in some other place,” he said. The one-month SIR in Telangana , which began on June 25, is currently underway. It will conclude on July 24. So far, 99 per cent enumeration forms were distributed. Meanwhile, Telangana Chief Election Officer (CEO) C Sudharshan Reddy said Election Registration Officers (EROs) will take extra care during the notice period vis-a-vis suspected Rohingya. When reporters asked how Rohingya Muslims living in Hyderabad, many of them found to have Aadhar and other identity documents, would be filtered from the electoral rolls, he said people like Rohingyas are unlikely to possess details of their 2002 status as voters. Therefore, they will not be able to provide all the details in the Enumeration Forms, which leads to a notice being issued to them, he said.