Public make beeline for voter verification, re-registration

Ongole: Responding to the warning of the Election Commission that March 15 is the last date to receive applications for registration of votes, hundreds of people are visiting the tahsildar offices to crosscheck whether their vote is available in the electoral list or not.

The public is following the news about the allegations of ruling and opposition parties on one another that they have applied for deletion of thousands of votes in each assembly constituency.

Though they are reluctant about the verification believing that their vote would be intact, a number of people are surprised later to find their votes disappear in the updated electoral rolls published in January. B Subrahmanyam from Koppolu said that he didn't believe that his vote would be deleted by the officials without his consent. But after learning that his vote is not appeared in the list, he vented out his anger on the invisible culprits and applied again for the vote.

After the recommendation of Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and the opposition leader in the assembly Y S Jaganmohan Reddy to the public to verify whether their votes are deleted, hundreds of voters whose vote is disappeared are reaching the tahsildar offices in the district for reapply for the votes.

T Krishna Babu from Ongole said that he shifted his vote from Guntur as he settled in Ongole for the last 4 years and wants to vote now. He said that he checked the vote and even get the voter ID printed with the local address in November 2018, but the vote is missing now.

He suspects that the ward level politicians might be behind the deletion of his vote and reapplied for it on Thursday. A net centre operator at court centre, B Suresh Babu said that they are receiving about 70 to 80 people daily for the last one week to verify their votes. He said happily, that they are verifying the vote for free but charging for the application of vote only and having a decent income.

Requesting anonymity, the town president of a political party shared that the sudden alertness of people about their votes will become a burden to the candidates soon. He said that when the electoral rolls are published in the past, only the parties used to worry about the votes but no one from the common people would have cared for it.

But now, the vote value is increased, and every vote is important as there is a tough fight between the TDP and YSRCP in the district. By the time the chief minister was sworn in, a five-member family could get new smart TV or AC fitted in their bedroom by utilising the vote, hinted the senior politician explaining the other reasons behind the demand for inclusion of vote.

The Prakasam district officials announced that they have 2,217 Form 6 applications at Yerragondapalem, 2,523 at Darsi, 2,512 at Parchuru, 2,468 at Addanki, 4,164 at Chirala, 2,690 at Santhanuthalapadu, 8,410 at Ongole, 2,737 at Kandukur, 2,727 at Kondapi, 2,632 at Markapuram, 2,513 at Giddalur, 3,377 at Kanigiri totaling to 38,796 applications of new votes are pending with them. They also announced that there are 1,735 Form 7 applications pending with them.