Voter list for BBMP poll as tacky as ever

Voter list for BBMP poll as tacky as ever
Addresses, Names Need Careful Check
Aarthi R | TNN

Bangalore: Her dad is the man in charge of giving all Indians their unique ID cards. Yet, even her name is not free from the devils on the voter list. Ja n h av i , daughter of N a n d a n Nilekani, cofounder, Infosys Technologies, will find her name listed four times, each time spelt differently, with a different age and even different house number. Her mother’s name is spelt ‘Rohini Nandan Nilathani’ even on the correction list of the ‘Special Summary Revision 2009’!
These ‘harmless errors’ seem quite uneasy to the eye. The list is open to a free search for all on the official website http://www.bbmpelections.info . Search for the Nilekanis under Part-20, ward 151 - Koramangala, as 1011, 1012, 1014 (a different house), 1148, 1169 and 1276 on the list.
SOME VOTERS AGED 0!
The plight of many other common voters across the city is worse. A late father-in-law is shown as husband, more than 50 voters are aged 150 years, some even 0 and below 18 years. A deeper search will elicit that one Shankar from Okalipuram (ward 96, Gandhinagar assembly) is 655 years old! A ‘Thayamma’ under ‘Other’s name’ lives at house number 271, which has at least 33 voters. These are just a few other surprises on the list.
Individual errors apart, entire voter lists are repeated. Fortunately this time, there’s been an early alert. Recently, over 20,000 names across 19 polling booths finally found their place on the respective voter lists.
The new software for voters to search for their names on the list with different spellings (jointly developed by Smartvote and Pluma Knowledge Solutions Pvt ltd) helped detect gross errors and get them corrected in just two days. The error was grave: Lists of five booths were copied out exactly onto lists of 19 other booths! Which would have meant that at least 20,000 voters would go home without voting, if left uncorrected.
WHAT WENT WRONG?
“Thanks to the people’s vigil, we’ve been able to trace and correct it on time. We are looking into the real reasons for this error as the hard copies available with us are all correct. There must have been some error in entering the data online. Following this episode, the BBMP ward EROs have been strictly instructed to compare both the hard copies and online version of voter lists and get back in the next three days,’’ SEC secretary D K Ravindranath told TOI.
Teachers say no to early election
Now, it’s the turn of teachers to say — ‘No BBMP elections during exam time’. The Karnataka State Primary school teacher’s association has written to the State Election Commission, asking it not to hold the polls during the months of March, April and May, citing the exam schedules of primary, secondary and higher education schools.
“Annual exams during this time are a regular activity and the future of many students depends on the same. The polls must not disturb students,’’ it said. TNN
ERRORS GALORE
Janhavi, daughter of Nandan Nilekani, co-founder, Infosys Technologies, has her name listed four times A late father-in-law is shown as husband More than 50 voters are aged 150 years, some even 0 and below 18 years, one person is 655 years old Lists of five booths were copied out exactly onto lists of 19 other booths