‘Telangana electoral rolls purified to the extent we can, advisories being issued against hate speeches’: Chief electoral officer Vikas Raj

Vikas Raj: Since the November 2023 Assembly polls, we have added 14.72 lakh voters, deleted 9.26 lakh voters and modified 10.23 lakh voter details. Yes, the number of modifications is slightly higher. The bulk of this happened as many of the families had been split between polling stations and we tried to bring them together with whatever data we had. We don’t otherwise collect this data. Many people also realised that because of their address change their Assembly constituencies also changed. In addition, some corrected mistakes in their names, addresses, date of birth, etc.

Q. Often we see complaints of missing names of voters and allegations of inaccuracies in the electoral rolls. As part of the purification of rolls, what other steps are taken to take various stakeholders into confidence?

Raj: Purification of rolls is an exercise we started two years ago. We have added about 60 lakh voters, deleted about 33 lakh voters and made about 30 lakh corrections of entries this time. There are 3.3 crore voters now. The electoral registration officer, one per each Assembly constituency, held weekly meetings with political parties and their representatives. Details were given to them and a list of additions, deletions and modifications thereafter was also given to them. This was also shared on the CEO’s website. Utmost trans*parency was maintained throughout. Any such problem would have been detected at the time. The electoral roll now is extremely clear and I am confident that whatever could have been done is done.

Q. Even after the last Assembly elections, we have seen allegations from political parties regarding a large number of voters registered under the same door number. Have you examined this?

Raj: We don’t know of any specific case but about a year-and-a-half ago we had one or two such cases reported. When we checked, for instance, in one case an entire medical college, its hostels and staff quarters were all given one door number. There are also old houses with many portions rented out to different families and all of them have one door number. We have taken a door-to-door exercise wherever there are more than six voters registered. Wherever we found bogus votes we have deleted them. More importantly, we have updated our records.

Q. Unlike the last Assembly election that was held during winter, the rising temperatures this season are becoming a concern. What are your thoughts

Raj: People are not letting go of their day-to-day activities, people are not letting go of what they want to do, they are taking care of their responsibilities and I am sure this is also something like that and they will continue to take care of this too. We are going to make all arrangements to whatever extent we can, from putting up shade, fans, coolers, drinking water, and transportation for persons with disabilities and old people. There will be volunteers to assist them and priority will be given. Ultimately it is the motivation one has to have to come out and cast their votes.

Q. There have been instances of hate speeches and gestures that could disturb communal harmony. What actions are being taken?

Raj: We are getting a lot of complaints and we have been advising political parties against it. The Election Commission of India (ECI) has been issuing advisories, they have been called for explanations earlier. So we hope good sense will prevail and people will obey the model code of conduct (MCC). It is with the cooperation of political parties that we can ensure a peaceful and conducive atmosphere for everyone to come out and vote. Regarding that gesture (BJP candidate’s imaginary arrow), the police have registered a First Information Report (FIR) and are investigating. Let the details come. So far, we have received 5,329 MCC violations with FIRs registered.

Q. Cash seizures were much higher during Assembly polls. Only Rs 165 crore worth of cash was seized so far in this Lok Sabha election, whereas Rs 100 crore mark was breached within a week of the MCC coming into force during Assembly elections.

Raj: I would assume that movement of cash in itself is much less. The difference between elections to the Assembly and Parliament is that Assembly elections are localised and keenly fought, whereas parties are spread over the country now. Though we are able to catch cash, freebies or liquor, it becomes a lot more difficult to establish the link to a political party though we might have some idea. Anyway, these seizures are converted to FIRs and filed in the courts.

Q. What are the learnings from the 2023 November polls and course corrections, if any?

Raj: We had two or three issues that would not have reflected outside but they were there. Something like postal balloting for our 2.6 lakh election duty staff. Even though it is called a postal ballot, the postal department is not involved anymore. We did that ourselves for the first time in the last elections. It became an extremely complex exercise as postal ballots from any one of the 119 Assembly constituencies had to go to the remaining 118 constituencies. This time, we have the entire data of staff who are voting and where they are casting their votes computerised and now we are going to have the exchange centre in Hyderabad and people can vote from their Assembly constituencies. The entire end-to-end process is computerised and data entry is important. We have strengthened our IT system. We are also focussing a lot on not only training our field-level IT staff but also retaining them and ensuring proper supervision of data entry. Last time, we were a bit ad hoc with our communication system to collect data from various places. So we have upgraded our system to collect data which is fed from everywhere, especially on the day of counting.

Q. In the 2019 Lok Sabha poll, the voter turnout in the state stood at 62.77 per cent. What is being done this time to enhance voter turnout?

Raj: Firstly, we identified 5,000 polling stations where the voting percentage was the minimum during the recent Assembly elections. We have done a door-to-door campaign, identified the reasons that could have deterred them, and worked on those, for instance, providing parking places, sharing the exact location of the polling station, the size of the queue at any point in time through an app, etc. Further, our approach has been to reach out to young voters which is one area of concern. We went to all colleges and identified around 15,000 campus ambassadors and through them, we communicated with the voters. We have also been going to residents’ welfare associations and gated communities, big office complexes etc. To reach out to women in urban and rural areas, we went to women’s groups. Distribution of voter information slips is something we have taken seriously this time. We have requested political parties to put their agents along with booth-level officers so that they don’t complain later about the distribution of slips.