Legal action if names removed arbitrarily: Congress

Warangal: The TPCC Election Commission Coordination Committee Chairman M Shashidhar Reddy on Wednesday advised the officials not to come under the pressure from the ruling party in deleting voters’ names from electoral rolls.

He accused the ruling TRS of resorting to large scale irregularities in the ongoing summery revision of electoral rolls in rural assembly constituencies in the State. The ruling party was doing this to win the ensuing gram panchayat elections and other elections.

There were reports of ruling TRS leaders across the State coercing the officials to delete the names of the genuine voters from electoral rolls in urban areas also. In Hyderabad, names of about 22 lakh voters were removed from the list, after Congress objecting it nearly 10 lakh names were again included in the electoral rolls, the Congress leader said.

Speaking to the presspersons here on Wednesday, Shashidhar Reddy asked Congress workers and leaders to be vigilant about the irregularities being committed by the ruling party. The coordination committee was formed following directions by AICC Chief Rahul Gandhi to monitor electoral revision process.

Expressing dissatisfaction over the revision of electoral rolls so far happened in the State he said the draft roll was supposed to be compiled by Dec 23, 2017. But the process was extended to March 24. It was meant to help the TRS party.

As the government planned to go for gram panchayat elections in February last week, the elections would be conducted on the basis of earlier voters list from which huge number of voter’s names were deleted, he noted. Shashidhar Reddy pointed out that the electoral officials if removed the name of any voter they must serve a notice to the person concerned stating the reasons for doing so. But the officials were not issuing the notices and deleting the names arbitrarily.

He told Congress workers to verify if any of the voter, whose name was removed from electoral rolls was served notice or not, as per law. If the notice was not served a case could be filed against the official concerned and he or she might have to face legal action which attracts two years jail term.

Shashidhar Reddy told the Electoral officials not to demand the voters whose names were removed to submit form-6 to include their names again. The inclusion of names must be done based on the previous record. Later, he went to Khammam and held meeting with party leaders.

The Coordination Committee Convener Niranjan, District Congress President N Rajender Reddy, ex-minister G Vijayarama Rao, ex-MLA P Veeraiah, TPCC General Secretary N Srinivas and others were present.