Missing names, faulty EVMs enrage voters
LUCKNOW: Missing names of voters and faulty voting machines in Lucknow and some other districts blighted the second round of elections on Sunday to select new representatives for urban local bodies in Uttar Pradesh.
Angry voters, whose names were missing, questioned the very existence of municipal taxes: “If we do not exist (in the voter list), why should we pay municipal taxes?” they asked.
Former Union minister Kalraj Mishra and the former Lucknow mayor Dauji Gupta were among the hundreds of people who could not vote since their names were missing from the list in polling stations in Lucknow.
In Varanasi, the name of Virbhadra Nishad, the proponent of PM Narendra Modi in the Lok Sabha elections, was missing from the voter list.
“Media reports that a lot of voters names are missing from the voting list of today’s election. This type of digital India cannot take us forward,” said former UP chief minister and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav in a tweet.
State election commissioner SK Agarwal said barring a few incidents of violence, polling was peaceful. The statewide poll percentage increased from 43.67% in 2012 to 48.65% this year, he said.
The second phase included 25 districts, covering 1.29 crore voters in all.
There were reports of violence and protests from Shahjhanpur, Mainpuri, Aligarh and some other districts. “I have sought a report from Mainpuri administration over the incident of firing there,” Agarwal said.
Kalraj Mishra went with his family to cast vote at Ganna Sansthan. After searching for a while, the polling staff could not find his name. Mishra voted at this station in the Vidhan Sabha elections on February 19 this year. Similarly, former Lucknow mayor Duji Gupta’s name was not found. Three times mayor of Lucknow and former MLC, Gupta said, “I have been regularly voting since 1962 in all the elections held so far in Lucknow. But my name is not there in the voters’ list. Thus I have been deprived of my fundamental right to cast my vote along with my joint family of 20 persons whose names are also
not there while all of us have our voter ID and Aadhaar cards.”
At Mall Avenue, Dilkusha Colony and Gomti Nagar too, several people shared similar stories, saying they had voted in February but their names were now missing from the list.
On the discrepancies in voters’ list, Agarwal said the SEC had deleted names of a large number of voters whose names also figured in voters’ lists of the rural local bodies’ election.
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Media reports that a lot of voters names are missing from the voting list of today’s election.This type of digital India cannot take us forward
AKHILESH YADAV, former CM on names missing from voters list
“Large number of voters having houses in villages as well as cities have got themselves enrolled in both electoral rolls,” he said.
Earlier, reports from polling stations across Lucknow suggested that voting was halted after machines started malfunctioning. In the first phase as well, many voters complained of faulty voting machines.
“We are standing since 7:30 am but officials say the EVM machines are out of order, it will take another few minutes for the other EVM machines to reach,” said Suresh Kumar, a voter in queue at Prathmik Vidhyalaya Barauli, Khalilabad in ward 14 near Nagram Nilmatha Road of Lucknow.
Similar reports came in from at least seven other polling booths of Lucknow.