Hyderabad: Data from the Telangana SIR explains why the “vote chori” row strikes a chord in Hyderabad. The INDIA bloc holds its rally on the issue in New Delhi on Sunday. The Special Intensive Revision took 73.39 lakh electors out of the draft rolls statewide. More than a quarter of them live in the capital.
Before the revision, Telangana had 3,38,26,448 electors. Booth level officers began house-to-house visits on June 25. They received enumeration forms from 2,64,87,213 voters, and the draft roll published on August 17 included all of them. Officials placed the remaining 73,39,235 in the ASDD category: absent, shifted, dead or duplicate.
Reported breakdowns put about 57.46 lakh under absent or shifted, 9.22 lakh as dead and 6.70 lakh as duplicates. A name on the ASDD list does not mean a permanent deletion. These voters can still file claims. Officials also issued notices on about 92.8 lakh entries with anomalies.
Hyderabad accounts for 19.41 lakh names
The 15 Assembly constituencies of Hyderabad district had about 47.36 lakh electors before the revision. Officials received forms for only about 27.95 lakh of them. Some 19.41 lakh electors, roughly 41 per cent, landed on the ASDD list. The district also generated about 12.5 lakh notices.
Hyderabad led the state in fresh applications too. By early October, it recorded about 1.93 lakh Form 6 requests for inclusion. It also logged more than 6,300 Form 7 requests for deletion. Jubilee Hills, Yakutpura, Bahadurpura, Nampally and Chandrayangutta saw the heaviest activity.
A social audit in Secunderabad Cantonment in late October checked a sample of names on the ASDD list. It found about 23 per cent of those voters still living at the same address. The finding covers only one sample. Still, it backs complaints that officials wrongly flagged some active voters.
Congress and BRS both target the CEC
Telangana stands out because both the ruling party and the main opposition are attacking the Election Commission. BRS working president K T Rama Rao and former minister T Harish Rao went further in early October. They demanded that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar resign. They also sought a probe under a sitting judge. Rama Rao argued that no authority can strip a citizen of the right to vote.
Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy has asked the state Congress to send thousands of workers to the Delhi rally. He alleges that the revision strikes off the votes of the poor, Dalits, Adivasis, minorities and women. The Telangana Congress ran its own “Vote Chor, Gaddi Chhod” campaign last year.
The Chief Electoral Officer of Telangana rejects the charges. The CEO’s office issued a statement on October 27. It said booth level officers moved names to the ASDD list only after house visits and inquiry. It added that left-out electors had several chances to apply. The Election Commission says the national ASDD figure reflects a draft-stage classification, not a final deletion.
Telangana SIR final rolls due on November 30
The Election Commission has extended the deadline for disposing of claims and objections to November 26. Final rolls are due on November 30. They will show how many names from the Telangana SIR review list make it back. Union Home Minister Amit Shah plans to lead a BJP padyatra in Hyderabad on November 2. The fight over the rolls is far from over in the state.