When Telangana goes to poll on December 7, many voters - possibly several lakhs of them, whose names were deleted from the rolls by the Election Commission’s purification process, will not be able to exercise their democratic right to vote. The voter-deletion, of about 27 lakh voters in the state, was done using an error-prone software which mapped Aadhaar data with voter IDs, and in many cases, without following due process and without voters’ consent.
While some among these voters might have reapplied for their voter ID and made it back into the rolls, many remain unaware that they have been deleted from the electoral rolls and will find this out only on the day of elections. Members of the opposition in the state allege that this large-scale voter deletion was done at the behest the TRS to disenfranchise those who have been profiled by the government as opposers of TRS.
It all began in 2015, when the Election Commission of India undertook the National Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication Programme (NERPAP), an exercise meant to ‘purify’ state electoral rolls of duplicate and bogus voters by linking Aadhaar with Electoral Photo ID Card (EPIC) aka voter ID cards. The process that began in March 2015 was put to an end by the Supreme Court in August in the same year, but by then the Telangana State Election Commission had deleted 27 lakh voters from the rolls already.
Today, the number of voters in Telangana stands at 2.73 crores, down from 2.82 crore voters in 2014 - a difference of 9 lakh voters. The EC claims these 9 lakh voters are those who had shifted out of Telangana to Andhra Pradesh after the state bifurcation in 2014, and that many of the deletions were of bogus and duplicate voters, or dead persons. Meanwhile, the state EC also added 12 lakh new voters to the electoral rolls this year, many among them being first-time voters who have just turned 18 years of age. It also includes those who were earlier deleted from the electoral rolls as part of NERPAP.
TNM met with many voters who were deleted from electoral rolls in 2015 and had to register as new voters. None of the deleted voters TNM spoke to had received any notice from the state EC about them being deleted. There could still be several voters who remain unaware that they are not in the voter rolls.
Suo motu deletion?
NERPAP uses a computer software which maps Aadhaar data with EPIC data to cull out bogus or duplicate voters, but the task of preparing and revising electoral rolls rests with the Electoral Registration Officers (ERO). The EROs can amend, transpose or even delete a voter, but only after following due process.
As per the process prescribed by the ECI, if the ERO intends to delete a voter, the official has to give a ‘reasonable opportunity to the voter who is being deleted by sending notices to the voter along with form-6, a document meant to reapply for deleted the voter ID’.
These notices were to be delivered by Booth Level Officers (BLOs) supervised by the EROs, who are in turn supervised by the District Election Officers (DEOs). Even after deletion, the BLOs are to visit the residence where the notice was served and collect the form-6 document, in case the voter reapplies.
Allegations are that due process was not followed for at least some of the 27 lakh voters deleted from electoral rolls in Telangana, and that these voters were deleted by the EROs solely based on the results of the software. The categories under which the suo moto deletions were done were shifted houses, dead, duplicate, ineligible and if the door locked. RTI documents reveal this has been known to happen in Delhi and Bihar, and activists say that without transparency in the Telangana process, we cannot be sure that this has not happened in Telangana too.
Even so, these allegations aren’t without evidence. Marri Shashidhar Reddy, senior Congress leader and four-time MLA from Sanathnagar constituency told TNM that when he visited the GHMC ward office at SR Nagar in 2015, he stumbled upon 22,000 unserved notices lying around in the office.
'The papers were lying around in the backside veranda of the office. I went there and found heaps of unserved notices from that office. I gathered 22,000 unserved notices and loaded them into my car as the officers there were annoyed with the piled-up documents. I then produced these unserved notices to the ECI,” said Reddy, “These notices were to be served to the voters who were going to be deleted from the electoral rolls under NERPAP, but they were never delivered to the voters by the BLOs. This happened sometime in the second week of October in 2015,” he added.
ECI sent a team to Hyderabad to look into the complaint of unserved noticed and found field verification of the 27 lakh deleted voters were not done and they were not served notices, the reverification order for the voters list was widely covered in the media at the time. “The officials found unserved notices everywhere,” added Reddy who estimates close to 40,000 to 50,000 voters were deleted from Sanathnagar constituency alone.
“The problem with the entire procedure of voter deletions or enrollment is the EC is not sharing details of how it serves notices to individuals. The Election seems to be automated this entire due process to an algorithm without further conducting door to door field verification by BLOs,” says Srinivas Kodali, an independent researcher working on the issue.
He adds, “This part of electoral procedure is completely non-transparent with no records publicly accessible on what and how EC is carrying out its job.”
The Problem with NERPAP algorithm
Experiences with the NERPAP software elsewhere in the country have not been encouraging, and that further highlights why due procedure not being followed in Telangana could be catastrophic.
(2) If it needs to find the latest driver from the Internet, how doe it do it if my laptop cannot connect to the WiFi?
During the pilot phase of NERPAP in Bihar in 2015, the software used to detect duplicates by the Bihar state election commission identified 37,54,648 voters as possible duplicate voters. However, after field verification, only about 2,47,789 duplicate voters were found to be duplicate and eventually deleted, shows an RTI document in possession with TNM.
After the field verification when the software was run once again on the updated electoral rolls, it again showed the existence of duplicates. The failure rate of the software was almost 93%, according to the Bihar EC.
So how many of the 27 lakh voters deleted by the Telangana state election commission were genuine voters?
Allegations of voter profiling
The Telangana government has made a database named the State Resident Data Hubs (SRDHs), which includes a person’s Aadhaar number, voter ID number, house address, geolocation of each household, mobile phone numbers, PAN card details and family relation details, amongst other data points. The SRDH was populated through a state survey called the Samagra Kutumbha Survey. The SRDH was also used by the Telangana government to create the Integrated Information Hub (IIH) managed by the Hyderabad Police, that contains voter id data of all citizens.
According to Kodali, the mapped data with any state government could result in voter profiling, thereby selectively targeting voters while providing government benefits. Srinivas, in November this year filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) with the Hyderabad High Court seeking disclosure of the algorithm source code of the software used for identifying duplicate and bogus voters in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
On July 21, 2015, a political controversy broke out in Telangana when the Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao summoned the then State Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Bhanwar Lal to the Chief Minister’s camp office for a meeting. This summoning of an official under the ECI by the chief minister was a violation of Section 13CC of the Representation of People’s Act.
At the meet, the CM requested the CEO to expedite NERPAP and delete bogus voters from Greater Hyderabad region – calculated to be 15 lakhs by the TRS. Various political parties then alleged collusion between the ruling TRS government and the CEO.
At the time when NERPAP was being implemented the District Electoral Officer (DEO) for Greater Hyderabad, to whom the EROs of a district report to, was Somesh Kumar who was also the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) commissioner. Somesh, referred to as “the blue-eyed boy of TRS” by Shashidhar Reddy, was at the time supervising the execution of NERPAP for the 24 constituencies that come under greater Hyderabad. He was directly responsible for serving these notices to voters in the Greater Hyderabad region.
After the ECI enquiry into the unserved notices, Somesh was shifted out of GHMC towards the end of 2015, albeit temporarily, to the post of Principal Secretary of the Tribal Welfare Department. He later represented Telangana in the GST council and now handles Commercial Taxes and has an additional charge of the Excise Department.
Shahsidhar Reddy accuses KCR, Somesh Kumar and Bhanwar Lal of conspiring to delete voters from electoral rolls of 24 assembly constituencies under Greater Hyderabad where the TRS did not gain major support in the 2014 state polls. The TRS had won just three seats from these 24 constituencies, while seven seats were won by AIMIM and 14 seats were won by the TDP.
Somesh was unavailable for a comment. Bhanwar Lal refused to comment on anything related to Telangana elections and NERPAP implementation.
Despite NERPAP, subsequent Intensive Revision of Electoral Rolls and yearly summary revisions, Telangana’s electoral rolls are still rife with duplicates and bogus voters. TNM had earlier done a ground report at Nampally constituency using addresses from the final electoral rolls released by the state EC on October 12 and found many discrepancies.
Moullim Mohsin Alkasary, a High court advocate, claims there are as many as 3,22,476 duplicates/bogus voters in Telangana, out of the then 2.82 crores voter population in the state. He came upon this number after having inspected state EC documents related to NERPAP using RTI, he says.
“I have been fighting to bring transparency in the electoral rolls from 2003, but people don't care nor do they understand why it is important to care,” says Mohsin, who claims that the state EC headed by Banwar Lal had completed 98 % of NERPAP in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh before the process was suspended by the SC.
“There are 30,64,434 lakh duplicate or bogus voters in greater Hyderabad limits, 1,15,547 bogus voters in Nampally constituency,” Mohsin claims.
When the present state CEO Rajath Kumar was alerted about the discrepancies, he assured the matter will be looked into. Election Commissioner of India OP Rawat, when asked about bogus voters still present in the electoral rolls, responded by saying, “Most of the problems we found were with duplicates. Many times, we had to manually scan and remove duplicate voters. Some cases, there were errors which we rectified using all the technology available to us. We have resolved most of the complaints that we have received”. He, however, admitted that bogus voters were still present in the electoral rolls that Telangana will be using for the upcoming state elections.
Click here to follow TNM's coverage of the Telangana Assembly Elections 2018.
The Chief Electoral Officer of Telangana needs to organize and oversee the electioneering process in the state of Telangana. The CEO Telangana works under the complete authority and control of the Electoral Commission of India. The task given to the Chief Electoral Officer is to oversee all the activities involved in the conduct of General and Bye – Elections.
During this process, the CEO needs to prepare and update Electoral Rolls, Issue photo Identity Card to Electors, organise polling stations, educate voters, implement the mode of conduct, the election laws and the instructions issued by the Election Commission of India from time to time.
How to Check Your Name In CEO Telangana Voter Lists Online
In other to check your name in CEO Telangana voter list online kindly follow the steps in this section.
The first thing you need to visit the website of the CEO Telangana. When you get to the website, move your cursor to the top menu bar and click on the search tab.
After clicking on it, you will see two options to choose from. The first option is assembly constituency while the second is council consistency. You need to to click on the constituency that applies to you. On clicking that, it will redirect you to another page.
If you clicked on council constituency, it will redirect you to a page which requires that you should select your district, MLC constituency type, and input your house number and name. It also requires that you should select your sex.
Otherwise, if you click on assembly constituency, it will redirect you to a page which requires that you should input your name, house number and photo identity card number. It also requires that you should select the district name, assembly constituency name and sex that apply to you.
In case you do not know your assembly constituency name, there is a link on this page that will show you your assembly constituency. It carries the instruction, “Click here to know your Assembly constituency name”. This link will direct you to a page which requires that you should select your district and input your colony name. After that, you will see your assembly constituency name.
In addition, you need to note that you are not required to enter initials and surname. For example, if your name is V. Gaj Agar, then enter any three letters of first name instead of entering V. Gaj Agar. Also, enter the first four letters of your house number to search all members of your house.
How to Check and Download Your Voter ID Status
To download the Voter ID card online you have to visit this website. But after getting to the website you have to first make sure that you have registered online. If you haven’t you can do so by moving to the top menu bar and clicking on the E-Registration tab. When you click on that tab, you will have to choose between two constituencies. You will have to choose either assembly or council constituency.
Follow these steps to register:
Click on the Forum-6 (New enrolment tab)
it will redirect you to a page, fill in all the required information in the page
Submit after that
After the registration, you will need to check CEO Telangana status in the link below.
If you have already registered, then you need to click on the “know your status” tab in any of the two constituencies that applies to you. After clicking on “know your status”, it will redirect you to another site. In this site, you will have to select your application ID, house number, form – 6, Form – 7, Form – 8 and Form – 8A. Then, you search for your voter ID status. Also, you can get your voter ID status by checking it in the list like we did in the section above.
Furthermore, to download your voter ID status with photo, type TS <space> VOTE <space> VOTER ID NO and send it to 51969. For example: TS VOTE ATE391402 or you can also send an SMS to 8790499899 by typing VOTE <space> VOTER ID NO. For example: VOTE ATE391402.
In conclusion, you should ensure that you have your Voter Identity Card and other details with you.
How to Download PDF Electoral rolls
If you want to download the PDF Electoral Rolls, follow the following steps:
Visit the website of the CEO Telangana .
When you get to the website, move your cursor to the top menu bar and click on the “PDF electoral Rolls tab”.
After clicking on the tab, you will have three options from which you will have to choose one. The first option is assembly constituency, second is council constituency, while the third is local authorities. You need to to click on the one that applies to you.
Note that the council constituency is the teacher’s constituency, while the local constituency is that of the local authorities and the assembly constituency covers none of the above persons. On clicking on any of the three, it will redirect you to another page.
If you click on the assembly constituency tab, it will redirect you to a page that requires you to select your district and assembly constituency name. After doing that you click on “Get Polling Stations” to download the PDF. If you are still in doubt about your assembly constituency name, go to How to check your name in CEO Telangana voter lists online section above.
Else, if you click on the council constituency tab, it will redirect you to a page which also requires you to select your district and assembly constituency. After selecting the two, you should click on “Get Polling Stations” to download the PDF.
Otherwise, you will click on the local authorities tab. After clicking this tab, it will redirect you to a page which only requires that you should select your district.
In addition, some of the things you are to note is that the electoral rolls are in PDF format, you need acrobat reader installed in your computer to view the PDF and you need to turn off Popup blocker. You can use any browser but Mozilla Firefox is preferable.
Telangana State Election Commission
తెలంగాణ రాష్ట్ర ఎన్నికల సంఘ
Agency overview
Formed
2 June 2014
Jurisdiction
Telangana
Headquarters
Hyderabad
Agency executives
Dr.Rajat Kumar,IAS[1], Chief Electoral Officer
K.Dharma Reddy[2], Secretary
Website
http://tsec.gov.in
The Telangana State Election Commission is an autonomous, independent Constitutional and Statutory authority of Telangana. It was formed under the Constitution of India as per the provisions of the 73rd and 74th Amendments Acts of 1992 .All Local Body elections of Telangana are conducted by this agency.[3][4][5]
2Functions
Structure[edit]
The Election commission is headed by a State Election Commissioner appointed by the Governor of Telangana. State Election Commissioner holds his term for five years. Usually, Commissioners are appointed in the rank of Secretary to Govt. of Telangana.
Functions[edit]
The Election Commission monitors the work relating to the conduct of General Elections and Bye-Elections local bodies within the state sanctioned by 73rd and 74th constitutional amendment acts.
Elections to the Rural and Urban bodies of Telangana are held by both direct and indirect elections. The sole controlling authority rests on the Telangana State Election Commission.
Electoral rolls are as per the electoral rolls of Telangana Legislative Assembly constituency. Polling stations are then identified based on the rolls. Following the notification for elections, similar norms followed as for the assembly elections.
Direct elections[edit]
This article is part of a series on
Government and Politics of Telangana
State of Telangana
Constitution of India
Fundamental Rights
Executive
Governor
Chief Minister
Cabinet Ministers
Legislature
Council
Assembly
Judiciary
Telangana High Court
State Coalitions
National Democratic Alliance (NDA)
United Progressive Alliance (UPA)
Urban
Municipalities
Assembly constituencies
Assembly constituencies
Elections to the following posts are held by this commission by Direct election.
Rural Bodies :
Members of the Zilla Parishad Territorial Constituency (ZPTC)
Members of the Mandal Parishad Territorial Constituency (MPTC)
Gram Panchayat Sarpanch
Gram Panchayat Ward Member
Urban Bodies :
The urban bodies consists of Municipal Corporations, Municipalities and Nagar Panchayats.
Corporators of Municipal Corporation
Councillors of Municipality/Nagar Panchayat
Indirect elections[edit]
Indirect elections are held for the following positions:After the assumption of charge by the elected candidates, Indirect elections are held in the allocated time by the local bodies.
Rural Bodies :
Upa-sarpanch of Gram Panchayat.
Urban Bodies :
Mayor and Deputy-Mayor of the Municipal corporations
Chairperson and Vice-Chairpersons in Zilla Parishad.
Chairperson and Vice-Chairperson in Municipalities
References[edit]
^[1]
^Dharma reddy appointed TS Election Commission Secy
^Telangana State Election Commission Rules
^Telangana to Support Linking Aadhar Card with Voters Card
^EC Makes Aadhaar EPIC Linkage Easy
External links[edit]
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Telangana_State_Election_Commission&oldid=877301320'
Home >News >India
A total of 1,821 candidates are in the fray for Telangana Assembly Elections.
New Delhi: Voting for Telangana Assembly Election 2018 is scheduled to take place on Friday, i.e., December 7. Polling for 119 Assembly seats in the state will begin at 8 AM and continue till 5 PM. Voters can check their names in the voter list online before exercising their franchise. (Complete coverage on Telangana Assembly polls)
The voter list for the eligible voters in the state is available online on the official website of Telangana State Election Commission, i.e., ceotelangana.nic.in.
Here is how you can check your name in the voter list online:
Step 1: Go to the official website – ceotelangana.nic.in.
Step 2: Under ‘Search Your Name’ tab, select Assembly constituency and then click on the name based link.
Step 3: Fill all the required details such as Voter ID Card number, the name of the assembly and the voter.
Step 4: Now press the icon ‘Find’. A new link to download the voter list will appear.
Telangana Voter Id Online
Step 5: Click on the download link to check your name.
Note: You can also check your name by clicking on the link in the homepage which says ‘To verify Name in the Electoral Roll through SMS‘. Now you can send an SMS to 9223166166 by typing ‘TS <SPACE> VOTE <SPACE> VOTER ID No’ or to 51969 by typing ‘TS <SPACE> VOTE <SPACE> VOTER ID NO ‘.
Click on this link to know the list of polling stations: electoralroll.
The voting will take place in 119 constituencies of Telangana. The 119-member assembly was dissolved on September 6 eight months ahead of its expiry date by the Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao-led government. This year, a total of 1,821 candidates are in the fray for Telangana Assembly Elections.
The counting of the votes for Telangana Assembly Election 2018 will take place on December 11, along with that of Mizoram, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.
Published Date: December 6, 2018 8:52 PM IST
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Telangana voter list 2018: India is a democratic country where voter identity card is a very important document. This identity card helps the countrymen of India to elect their representative. Elections for any country are similar to their back bone. Lets discuss about voter id download telangana, Telangana Voter ID Card Online, CEO Telangana Voter List 2018, voter list 2018 telangana, voter list telangana, Telangana Voter Card Status.
Telangana voters list – Telangana voter id list
India Election Commission is an official body which monitors the election process at national, state, local and regional level in India and ensures that the electoral process is within the purview of law. Under this there are many national election commisions, which come with the help of ECI, monitor the election process under its respective state. In addition to the EC Election process, the eligible people also issue voter certificates to eligible citizens who give them the right to cast their votes in the elections. ECI is currently issuing photo voter certificates to eligible voters.
In December this year, assembly elections are going to be held in Telangana whose date has been fixed. In order to successfully communicate this election, Telangana Chief Electoral Officer is playing the responsibility of issuing voter lists to the state voters. CEO releases the list of voters before any election in Telangana. In view of the tarring of elections in Telangana, the CEO has issued a district-wise voter list from its database of Telangana. This year many new eligible voters had created their voter ID card whose names have been listed. You can also download Voter ID card Telangana online.
Telangana voter list search by name – Telangana voter list name search
Voter ID card helps voters to ensure that India’s economy are given in the hands of a proper government. It is very important for every citizen to have a voter card. Voter certificates are shared by the Election Commission of India, which is the unit of electoral process of India. If you are from Telangana and have filled the application for voter certificate then you can see your name online through the telangana grama panchayat voter list 2018. In today’s article, we will give you information about Voter ID Card Online, telangana assembly elections, Telangana voter list name, Telangana voter list download, election commission of telangana voters list, telangana voter list verification, etc.
First you will have to go to Telangana’s chief election officer’s official website.
After this you will see three options as soon as new window is open.
These options will be the “Voter ID card number, by residence address and by its name” option.
Choose from these options according to your convenience.
After this, fill out the requested information and submit it.
After that you will be able to see your name in the list.