NEW DELHI: Telugu Desam Party (TDP) supremo N Chandrababu Naidu on Monday wrote to the Election Commission of India (ECI), seeking the intervention of the poll body over irregularities in revising the voters’ list, including registration of bogus voters, deletion of names of his party sympathisers and allocation of different booths to members of a family.
In his letter to the elections body, Naidu claimed that the ruling YSR Congress of running a parallel election machinery by subverting the existing election staff in the state.
“Take immediate action on all the issues to protect the rights of all eligible voters,” the letter said.
“Ensure that every eligible voter is included in the Electoral Rolls and all the dead and fake voters’ names are deleted. Review the ‘deletions’ done during the last two revisions duly following the prescribed procedure and restore those eligible voters. Thorough checking of the Form-7 applications filed in bulk and arrange to reject bulk applications under Rule-17 of R.P Act, 1950,” the letter by Naidu said.
It further demands ensuring that the volunteers are kept away from every election-related work, in view of the repeated cases of volunteers participating in the election-related work despite the strict instructions issued by the Election Commission.
“An inquiry may be ordered by ECI on collection and transfer of voters’ data including Aadhar numbers of citizens by forcing the volunteers and handing over the data to private agencies and initiate criminal action against the conspirators of all electoral frauds,” it reads, adding that all the representations pending with ECI for a long time may be got immediately inquired into and time-bound action taken.
It further demands to review and monitoring of the status of 10.32 lakh voters’ data relating to deaths and duplicate entries submitted booth-wise by the Telugu Desam Party to the CEO, AP and the EROs in all the constituencies.
Naidu, in his letter also demanded the ECI to direct the AP Government to draft teachers and other department staff as specified in the manual on electoral rolls which is the practice all over the country.
“It needs to be noted that the teachers and other government staff have been recruited over time, by different governments and have exposure and experience to withstand the rigour of election work unlike Grama/ward Sachivalayam staff who were recruited recently by the present State Government and are inexperienced in the elections,” it added.
Notably, the TDP leader Chandrababu Naidu on Monday visited the Election Commission to lodge his complaint. Meanwhile, the YSR Congress has also lodged a counter-complaint with the election body, accusing the TDP leader of incorporating nearly 50 lakh bogus votes during his rule as chief minister of the state.
“All three members with senior officers were present there. I gave clear presentations on how the Andhra Pradesh government is violating the election process and how they are destroying the system of democracy. Now, they want to destabilise the political system…I told the election commission tomorrow I want to file an affidavit. I have to ask the DGP under RTI how many cases are pending on me…They want to terrorize political activists… State bureaucracy is terrorised,” said TDP Chief Chandrababu Naidu.
The two parties have been trading charges on the inclusion of bonus votes, migrated voters and deletion of names of supporters from the voters’ lists.
However, the YSR Congress Party has denied the allegations leveled by the Opposition party.
“Today we made a presentation before the Chief Election Commissioner about how the electoral rolls between 2014 and 2019 have been manipulated…The TDP Opposition Leader in Andhra Pradesh is making unwarranted and false allegations which are not tenable in law…” YSR Rajya Sabha MP V Vijaysai Reddy said after meeting the Chief Election Commissioner. (ANI)