Hyderabad: After flagging the bulk submission of Form 7, voters across several Hyderabad constituencies have raised concerns over their names being deleted from the electoral rolls after being marked as either ‘dead’ or ‘permanently shifted’, despite having lived at the same address for years.Such errors have come to light in Serilingampally, Kukatpally, Malkajgiri and Chandrayangutta constituencies, among others. On-ground election officials have asked affected voters to fill Form 6 — meant for registering as a new voter — instead of restoring their names to the electoral rolls.“A 22-year-old man, Mohd Aqeel Ahmed, is alive and is a resident of Falaknuma. But he is shown as dead, and his vote has been deleted. How is this fair?” asked Syed Jalaluddin Zafar of Youth Welfare Telangana, questioning how such errors could have occurred while the Election Commission was preparing the draft electoral rolls.The case was confirmed by Atiya Sultana, the booth-level officer for Part No. 292, where Aqeel’s vote was listed. Speaking to TOI, she said his vote had been erroneously deleted.“I went and met him this morning. His name was entered in the dead list by mistake. But the error did not happen at my level. I have requested him to fill Form 6 to be included as a new voter as there is no other procedure,” she added.Zafar, meanwhile, alleged that Ahmed’s case was not an isolated one and that many voters in Chandrayangutta and other constituencies had similarly been shown as dead or permanently shifted and had their names deleted despite submitting enumeration forms.Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) official spokesperson Syed Nizamuddin claimed that there were hundreds of cases involving people whose names had been shown as ‘dead’.“As of now, about 4.4 lakh Form 6 applications have been submitted. Most of these are from people whose votes were wrongly deleted, showing death, untraceable or permanently shifted as the reason,” he said.A voter from Serilingampally, Satyanarayana V, on the other hand, said a cousin who died almost a decade ago was still listed in the draft electoral roll.“This is happening even as those who submitted enumeration forms are finding their names missing. This shows there have been serious lapses in the process and officials have retained or deleted names as per their whims,” he added.Demanding that the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) be scrapped, several voters alleged that the exercise amounted to mass disenfranchisement rather than a revision of the electoral rolls, with thousands of voters’ names being deleted following Form 7 submissions during the process.As per data released by the chief electoral officer, Telangana, 73,39,235 voters have been included in the Absent, Shifted, Dead or Duplicate (ASDD) list, of whom around 48 lakh are from constituencies in Greater Hyderabad.While 45.18 lakh have been listed as permanently shifted, 11.25 lakh as absent or untraceable, and 9.22 lakh as dead, no specific reason has been given for the remaining voters.“Both my mother’s and my name have been deleted despite us living in the same house for over a decade and having voted in the last two assembly and Lok Sabha elections. It’s all confusing. How can they just say permanently shifted?” asked Varsha, a voter from Sanathnagar constituency.She said she was unwilling to submit Form 6 as doing so would require her to declare that she was not already a voter.Another voter, Priyanka Malhotra, claimed that all her family members’ names had been deleted from the electoral roll without prior notice, verification or an opportunity to respond.“The burden is now entirely on citizens to prove their eligibility again, even though they were already valid electors. There appears to be no transparent mechanism to determine why a voter was removed, what evidence was relied upon, or how such errors can be corrected promptly,” she said, adding that they had been living in the same house for more than two decades.Repeated attempts by TOI to reach C Sudharshan Reddy, CEO, Telangana, for a comment were unsuccessful. Officials, however, maintained the only option currently available to voters included in the ASDD list is to submit Form 6 and register as new voters.
