Missing voters left fuming DH News Service,Bangalore: With a 44 per cent voter turnout in the City a steep eight per cent drop over the las

Missing voters left fuming

DH News Service,Bangalore:



With a 44 per cent voter turnout in the City a steep eight per cent drop over the last elections, the polling day didnt actually shake up Bangaloreans.


With a 44 per cent voter turnout in the City — a steep eight per cent drop over the last elections, the polling day didn’t actually shake up Bangaloreans.

Yet, the widespread frustration over missing names from the voters’ List sent tempers soaring. Thousands had spent hours and days in queues to grab their Electoral Photo Identity Cards (EPICs).

Yet, their EPIC struggle came to a nought as they could not exercise their franchise as they queued up again before the booths only to be told that their names weren’t there in the voters’ list.









Feeling cheated, many of them returned home. Infuriated, several others called up the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) and Election Commission helplines to complain, to take out their ire on whoever attended them.

Over 5,000 residents of Sarvagnanagar found their names missing in the list. The same fate awaited 1,450 residents of Om Shakti Layout in Bommanahalli. The EC helpline itself received over 4,000 complaints.

EC blames public
Election Commission officials blamed citizens for not verifying whether their names figured in the list, when it was displayed for public.

“We had given them enough time to make corrections, additions or deletions. If they had cooperated with us then, these problems would not have come up,” reasoned B S Ramprasad, Bangalore District Electoral Officer.

Asked why even those with EPICs had their names missing, he said: “That cannot be possible, we might to have to verify that because the cards are issued based on the entries in the list. There could have been confusion over the identification of booths as this is the first election after the delimitation of constituencies. Besides, what we had done was a summary revision of the rolls and not an intensive revision.” To gauge the mood on the ground, Deccan Herald reporters fanned out to face voters and catch the scenes in booth after booth.

Here’s how the simmering anger spilled out:

“We got the identity cards after standing in long queues for almost seven hours on May 3. They gave us the cards only after verifying that our names figured in the list. But today, when we came to vote, the polling officer could not find our names. This is strange. How can the list change in a week’s time?” wondered Abdul Gafoor and Shawar, residents of Masjid Street of Muniswamy Garden, Neelasandra from Shantinagar constituency.
J A Kantharaj, a resident of 18th ‘F’ Main in Koramangala 6th Block, said none of his family members could vote because of missing names.

‘Something fishy’

“All four of us have identity cards. But except my daughter’s, all other names are missing. There is something fishy about the whole issue. We are disappointed as we really wanted to vote,” he said.