Maruti Suzuki Chairperson RC Bhargava was among the multiple voters who complained of their names being removed from the electoral list as 91 constituencies across the country went to polls for Phase 1 of Lok Sabha elections 2019.
Speaking to CNBC-TV18 News, Bhargava said:
“I have an election card issued by the Election Commission. I had voted in 2017 Assembly elections. I had not got a slip this time but I still went to the polling station thinking I will get to vote since I have an election card. When I went there, I found my name was on the list but across it somebody had stamped ‘Deleted’. That clearly meant that I couldn’t vote. My question is how do names get deleted and what is the process of informing the person whose name has been deleted?”
Earlier in the day, Vice Chairperson of Apollo Hospitals and former CII chief Shobana Kamineni, said she felt cheated as a citizen after she found out her name had been deleted from the voters’ list in the Secunderabad Lok Sabha constituency, where she had voted last December during the Telangana Assembly elections.
Kamineni met with Rajat Kumar, the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Telangana, to express her grievance and the Election Commission has since apologised to her for the erroneous deletion of her name from the voter rolls.
In a video that’s being shared widely on social media, the daughter of Apollo Hospitals chief Dr Pratap Reddy can be heard saying she was travelling abroad and returned to India to exercise her franchise. However, she was told at the polling booth that her vote had been deleted.
Businessperson Kiran Mazumdar Shaw's mother was one of those whose name was deleted.
“My mother's voter ID has been deleted on some flimsy excuse that there was a report that she no longer lives at her address. She is so upset I can't tell you because she has been at the same address for 19 years. So much for 'verification',” Shaw tweeted.
Delhi Chief Minister Kejriwal took to Twitter and tagged people who claimed their names or the names of their relatives have been deleted from voters’ lists.
"What is happening, EC? Are these elections fair?" Kejriwal asked.
"Anti-BJP votes deleted all across India. Reports coming from all across India that votes have been deleted on unprecedented scale. Why are all faulty EVM machines seen voting always for the BJP?" he tweeted.
(With inputs from PTI, CNBC-TV18 News)
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