Suo moto deletions from voter rolls not possible

​Ongole: Prakasam District Collector Vadarevu Vinay Chand announced that the electoral registration officers cannot delete any voter from the list. He explained that the Election Commission (EC) suspends the ERO’s power of deleting votes by Suo moto as this is an election year. 

If there is any vote for deletion, the ERO should serve a notice, give a hearing date and based on the available proofs, he can recommend it to the collector for deletion, Vinay Chand explained in a press meet at collectorate. He advised the public and political parties to not believe gossip of some officer deleting votes to do favour to others.

The Collector said that the administration is busy since last month in following the EC guidelines and meeting poll preparedness deadlines set from time to time. He announced that the final draft of electoral rolls was published on January 11 and there are 2495383 voters in the district. 

In them, he said that there are 1243411 men, 1251823 are women, while 149 are from the third gender. He announced that the process of updating the electoral rolls will be carried out continuously up to the day of election commission releases the notification. He said they cannot accept the claims and modifications after the release of notification, but will continue to take new vote registrations, for inclusion in the electoral rolls after the completion of the election.

Vinay Chand said that as on Thursday there were nearly 82000 claims pending with them and ordered the officials to dispose them immediately. He also added that the software with the EC identified that 15000 duplicate votes are exist in the district. He said that the booth level officials will serve notice to the voters and keeps the vote where the voter is actually living after conducting ground level verification. He said that there are 17403 logical errors like gender, age, address and EPIC numbers observed in the electoral rolls and he requested the cooperation of voters in rectifying them.

The Collector said that the election commission announced February 23 and 24 as special campaign days and ordered the 3269 booth level officers in the district to be available at their respective booths with all forms for new registrations, claims, modifications and deletions. He said the people who get their votes in the rolls by the last date of nominations will be able to exercise their vote in the coming elections. He asked the public to verify the voter lists at the polling booth officers and request for new registrations or report for corrections and modifications through the respective form immediately.

The Collector Vinay Chand, joint collector S Nagalakshmi, STEP CEO B Ravi and other officials released posters to create awareness among the public on the right to vote and exercising it in free atmosphere.