Visakhapatnam East MLA alleges large-scale deletion of names from poll rolls in his constituency

TDP MLA Ramakrishna Babu has written to ECI seeking special officer to investigate alleged deletion of 40,000 names from voters’ list in Visakhapatnam East Constituency.

Visakhapatnam (East) MLA V. Ramakrishna Babu from the Telugu Desam Party(TDP) on Saturday said that he has written a complaint to the Election Commission of India seeking appointment of a special officer to look into alleged large-scale deletion of names from the voters’ list in the constituency. He alleged that over 40,000 names were deleted from the voter’s list in the constituency and added that there was no response despite taking up the issue to the notice of Andhra Pradesh Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Mukesh Kumar Meena.

Addressing a press conference at the TDP office here, Mr. Ramakrishna Babu said that on March 24, he had written a complaint to the CEO on the issue. When Mr. Meena had directed the District Collector to look into the issue, the Collector had submitted a report on June 24, in which he had stated that names of 32,000 votes have gone missing. The TDP MLA said that the report has a number of mistakes and the actual number of missing voters is around 40,000.

“Based on the Collector’s report, I have again written a complaint to the CEO on June 30, but there was no response from him. So, through my lawyer, we have given a complaint to Election Commission of India, New Delhi,” he said.

According to Mr. Ramakrishna Babu, as per the Collector’s report, in booth No. 24, 41 votes were missing, but in fact, the number of missing votes is 325. In booth No. 104, out of 922 votes, only 300 votes are present, while 672 votes have gone missing, he stated.

He said that in Surya Teja Nagar, there are about 580 votes for three door Nos 13/790, 13/733, 13/769. In booth No. 27, there were 1,430 votes and now there are 1,114. Similarly, in Booth No. 61, there should be 1,035 voters, now there are 763. Around 471 votes were deleted in booth No. 20 at Arilova, he said.

“The same problem exists in all the 282 booths in Visakhapatnam East Constituency. We suspect the same is happening in other constituencies in the city too” he said.