Nagpur voters’ names appear in other municipal corporation lists

 

 

 

A bizarre situation emerged during the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) elections when Praveen Mahadeo Kamble, a resident of Nagpur, found his name missing from the local voters list. Instead, his name appeared in the list of Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) elections. Omkar Gowarkar, a contributor at a help booth told that Praveen is a resident of Gittikhadan Layout, however, he was assigned Baramati as his voting centre. Another contributor Raman Tiwari shared how as a result of this discrepancy, Praveen was not able to cast his vote in city civic body elections despite being a long time resident of city. Another example of the same was Ratnamala Kisanrao Kamble, a resident of Rahate Nagar, who had her name showing up for Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar Municipal Corporation. This, again, barred her from taking part in NMC elections.

 

There was also Nagesh Manik Moon, a resident of Imambada, who had his name assigned to Baramati, Pune. He has previous voting card listed as resident in Prabhag 17 but on reaching the help booth set up by political parties, Moon found his name figuring in voting list of Purandar tehsil in Pune district, much to his dismay. These three were among the many who had been facing similar issues of local voters seeing their names vanishing from city voters list and getting added to lists of other municipal corporations. The help booth set up for resolving the issue found themselves puzzled on what the resolution to such a situation could be in such a short span of time. “With similar instances occurring throughout the elections, potential voters have now gotten discouraged to cast their vote”, said Atul Duragkar, social worker and contributor at a help booth. 

 

 

More than 1,500 voters from Subhash Nagar, falling under Prabhag 37, were reportedly compelled to vote for candidates contesting from Prabhag 36. Many said being forced to vote for candidates from areas they did not belong to reduced their interest in participating in the election. 

 

 

Printing mistakes in the voters list created further obstacles, with names and photographs missing in several entries. Due to these errors, many voters were reportedly barred from casting their votes. Senior citizens described this as the first election they had witnessed with such a high level of mismanagement.

 

 

The requirement to cast four separate votes using electronic voting machines left many voters confused. A social worker present at polling centres said several senior citizens and first-time voters struggled to understand the process and, in some cases, ended up voting for candidates they did not intend to support. One common refrain post voting was that the voters were not very sure as they had pressed the button in correct order. Means they were unsure as to where there votes went as the display was not very clear and in small letters making it difficult to locate. 

 

 

Several voters were found to have been assigned two different polling booths. Election staff required such voters to sign undertakings stating that they would not vote more than once. Kailash Jogani, one of the affected voters, said the process was extremely time-consuming and caused confusion. He warned that such mistakes open the door to misuse and should not occur in the first place. 

 

 

Instances of duplicate entries were also reported. Voter Avinash Mantana Parteki found his name listed twice at the same polling booth at Antar Bharti Ashram, Khamla Square. Election support staff present at the booth said such repetitions had become common during this election. 

 

 

Social worker Atul Duragkar, who was assisting voters facing confusion, said that in just three polling booths, more than a hundred names of deceased persons were found on the voters list. He added that names of citizens who had migrated out of the city were also not removed. According to him, such discrepancies lead to incorrect voter turnout figures and raise serious concerns about the accuracy of electoral data.