Chittoor District : 82K claims received to enrol as voters

• Chandragiri tops the list with 18,949 applications followed by Tirupati with 13,954
• District has 30.25 lakh voters as on January 11 and it may go up by the time of elections

Tirupati: Voter enrolment has been taking several twists and turns in Chittoor district particularly in Chandragiri constituency from where YSRCP MLA Chevireddy Bhaskar Reddy is representing. 

Allegations of enrolling engineering students from other parts as voters of that constituency and counter allegations of removing eligible voters from the electoral list have heated up the situation in Chandragiri constituency. 

The election authorities have received 23,516 representations for enrolment, removal and making changes in the electoral list of Chandragiri segment. 

Already, the number of voters in the geographically big constituency has reached 2.7 lakh, which may go up further as enrolment can be done till the date of nominations. 

After the announcement of final voters’ list–2019 on January 11, the total number of voters in the district was 30.25 lakh. 

The Election Commission has decided to extend the procedure for youth, who have completed 18 years of age, to enrol as voters. 

Accordingly, from January 11, a provision was made through which new voters can be registered or corrections can be made. Also, on February 23 and 24, the EC has made arrangements to receive applications for enrolment or corrections directly at polling stations. 

With all these, a total of 1,39,425 applications were received by the authorities out of which 82,591 have applied for enrolment as voters. 

Chandragiri constituency stood first in getting maximum number of 18,949 applications for registering as voters and more than 11,000 applications regarding various objections on those who have already enrolled. Tirupati was in next place with 13,954 applications for enrolment and about 3,500 objections. 

The officials were saying that because of increasing urbanisation new voters have been coming up in these two areas. It may be recalled that several areas in Tirupati rural are in Chandragiri constituency. 

However, Chandragiri has become a major tension for district officials with TDP and YSRCP have been trading serious charges on each other. 

While TDP has been claiming that YSRCP has enrolled large number of bogus voters, who were studying elsewhere and submitted false claims for removal of voters who were the sympathisers of TDP. 

But MLA Bhaskar Reddy was arguing that TDP’s claims for removal of thousands of voters were false. He was saying that as they were his party’s voters, TDP wants to delete them from voters’ list.

Both the parties went to the streets over their arguments creating law and order problem also. Even after, Collector PS Pradyumna’s categorical statement that no voter can be removed from the rolls at this stage without valid reason and without notice, YSRCP seems to be not convinced. 

As, there is still time for registering as voters, the officials will have to focus more on this constituency as it became a sensitive segment even before the election schedule is announced.