TS Congress leaders seek delay in disclosure of electoral rolls

Hyderabad: State Congress leaders on Monday met Central election commissioners with a request to postpone publication of final electoral rolls pertaining to Telangana state as the names of a number of eligible voters have been deleted, they claimed.

A delegation of Marri Shashidhar Reddy, MLA D.K. Aruna, G. Niranjan and A. Shyam Mohan from Telangana Pradesh Congress committee met chief election commiss-ioner Om Prakash Rawat, election commissioners Sunil Arora and Ashok Lavasa in Delhi.

Their contention was that a Congress appointed committee had gone to all districts in the state to verify voters’ lists and found that state election authorities did not give any publicity on verification of electoral rolls which was evident with non-availability of booth level election officers and non-cooperation from other election authorities in various districts.

They complained that no deleted voters and additional voters’ lists were available for political parties to check thou-gh this is mandatory. They said lists were prepared by election officials at the behest of the ruling TRS party and the same lists will be used in the gram panchayat elections in the state.

They said deletion of 700 names of legitimate voters in Danthanpally village in Adilabad district alone indicates how election officials have resorted to malpractices. They said that though they had sought the intervention of the chief electoral officer in the state, he did not take any action in the matter.

According to the delegation, the chief election commissioner has promised to send an observer to look into their complaints.