Sweepers doing scrutiny of voter lists!

Hyderabad: Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) officials are drafting the services of sweepers and other sanitation workers for the scrutiny of electoral rolls and assisting citizens seeking corrections in their entries in the voters' list. At some polling booths in some areas in the city, the sweepers and other staff are manning them in the absence of booth-level officers.

It was quite visible to handle the job as they lack training and the nature of the job they were supposed to do.

A few leaders of the political parties have brought this issue to the notice of the media. Ponna Venkataramana, BJYM leader from the Old City, shared a few pictures showing sanitation workers and sweepers sitting at the polling booth for distribution of forms. He alleged that GHMC officials acted recklessly and deployed sweepers for such an important work of voter list verification.

A draft voters' list has already been uploaded on the web. The door to door survey has also been completed this month and names of the voters who have died, transferred or dislocated were deleted from the list. There are 1500 polling stations across 15 Assembly constituencies in city.

Additional Commissioner (Elections) Jayaraj Kennedy said it was a huge task to take complaints, queries, and make corrections in the list. There were different forms for different tasks made available at the polling booths, he said.

He said, “Form 6,7,8, and others were available at the booths with BLOs present throughout the day. In some places Anganwadi teachers, other GHMC employees were also used. At some stations, sanitary workers and others were used only to relieve BLOs.”

Citizens say that there were many loopholes in the rural voters’ drafts too. They said the streamlining of voters list was an important task, but it was prepared with tentative arrangements.
They allege that GHMC officials failed to pay remuneration for the BLOs in the past and that is the reason they are not attending to the duties this time.

Mohammed Younus