Vakula Devi (name changed to protect privacy) had stayed in the Attapur area of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) for decades. Eventually, her four children got married, had their own families, and shifted out of the parental home. Once age caught up, Devi also shifted to her daughter’s home near Patancheru located in the north-western end of Hyderabad. Her family home has been rented out for five years now.
During the election season in Telangana that concluded earlier this month, electoral staff deployed for the Rajendranagar constituency, under which Attapur falls, came knocking at the door of the family home. They enquired with the tenant if Vakula Devi, now over 80 years old, needed home voting facility offered by the Election Commission of India (ECI) to super senior citizens and persons with disabilities.
They had no inkling that the woman had shifted, long ago, to a different address which fell under the purview of another constituency. The staff also learnt about the death of another woman named Bharati Paul, a resident of Hyderguda, during their effort to enrol super senior citizens for home voting. Paul’s and Devi’s names appear even now on the electoral roll of Rajendranagar constituency, along with a number of senior citizens about whose demise the Booth Level Officers (BLOs) learnt only during the drive conducted after the final electoral rolls were published.
“About 20-25 of the senior citizens I enquired about as part of the drive were deceased. During distribution of voter slips, I discovered that more than 20% had shifted homes,” Chandraiah, a BLO informed.
Swapna, another voter from L.B. Nagar constituency, has a different story to tell. She shifted home within the same constituency, and tried to change the address online. Having failed, she went to a voter enrolment camp, and registered herself afresh. “I was surprised to find two different Electoral Photo Identity Cards delivered to my mail box, one with my old photo and another with the new one,” she says.
Low polling
During the November 30 elections to the Telangana Legislative Assembly, Hyderabad district recorded the lowest polling percentage in the State, at 47.88%, with one constituency, Yakutpura, bringing in less than 40% of its population to the polling booth. A couple of other urban constituencies which are part of the Rangareddy district also registered a voter turnout less than 50%.
The day after polling, headlines decried the apathy of the urban voter, which referred to the reluctance of the urban middle-class to participate in the quinquennial electoral opportunity offered by the representative democracy in India. The headlines were no different after the previous Assembly elections in the State, towards the end of 2018. Hyderabad district had then recorded a polling of 50.31%, with Malakpet falling behind all the other constituencies at 41.61%.
In order to address the inexplicable apathy and raise the polling percentage, Hyderabad district’s electoral authorities had taken several measures this time. Home voting opportunity for senior citizens above the age of 80 years, and persons with disabilities was part of that effort. Exclusive to the Hyderabad district was an app on the GHMC website, where the voter could check for the queue and waiting time at their respective polling stations.
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GHMC Commissioner and Hyderabad District Election Officer Ronald Rose had said bringing the voter out to exercise their franchise was the biggest challenge for the district electoral establishment this election season. Going by the polling figures, he failed despite his best efforts.
A large number of the 4,119 polling stations in the city experienced only a trickle of voters for the better part of the day. It was only after 4 p.m., with an hour left for polling time to close, that people started arriving.
Voter apathy, roll errors
Urban voter apathy may not be the only reason polling percentages in the urban constituencies in and around areas surrounding the Hyderabad district were low. Errors in the electoral rolls too may have contributed to the abysmal polling percentage. The rolls are heavily dependent on the proactive contribution of voters, rather than that of authorities.
ECI conducts a Special Summary Revision of Electoral Roll every year, during which the list of voters is updated. In addition, a drive is taken up to clean up the list ahead of every general election. BLOs are deployed at the chosen polling stations where the voters are expected to register themselves or effect any change in their status. In Hyderabad district, workers from the sanitation department of GHMC mostly act as BLOs.
“Very few voters arrive on their own accord to update the status. It is mostly political party agents who bring to our notice any discrepancy,” an electoral official reveals, under the condition of anonymity. There is also an option to update the details online, but the system is not as effective as it should be owing to technical glitches.
This time, a sticker campaign was taken up in the city: BLOs were sent on home visits, to paste the stickers on doors, and invite voters to go to polling booths and exercise their franchise. During the campaign, the BLOs were also asked to make note of the deceased and voters who had shifted out, so that corresponding changes could be made to the voters’ list.
“A majority of the BLOs are employed with GHMC through outsourcing agencies on salaries less than ₹20,000 per month. What motivation could they possibly have to take up such an important task?” says the official, adding that they are easily manipulated by political parties.
M. Padmanabha Reddy, secretary of civil society group Forum for Good Governance, attributes the errors in the electoral rolls to the impersonal character of the metropolitan region.
“In rural areas, Revenue officials conduct the enrolment, and they know people by name. In the city, it is left to the municipal body, which feels that this is an added burden to its regular duties. Besides, there is more shifting in urban areas, which adds to the difficulties,” Reddy says.
Demographics don’t lie
As per the latest report by World Population Review which is based on the United Nations report of world population prospects, the population in the areas falling within the purview of GHMC in 2023 is estimated to be 1,08,01,163. Another survey report by the Centre for Good Governance says that 24% of the GHMC population is estimated to be migrant. This leaves the estimated resident population at a little over 82 lakh. The number of voters in the aforementioned areas, as per the electoral roll, adds up to 85,32,066 (even after excluding constituencies such as Maheshwaram and Patancheru which have a mix of urban and rural populations), which is higher than the estimated resident population, and constitutes close to 80% of the total population.
This is way higher than the average elector-population ratio of 67-73% for India, and points to the need of a thorough tidying up of electoral rolls.
Congress party candidate for Nampally constituency Mohammed Feroz Khan lost with a margin of a little over 2,000 votes to Mohammed Majid Hussain from All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen. Eight months before elections, Khan took up an exercise which no other candidate could ever even think of — he established a pre-election war room in Attapur, recruited 200 educated women on a salary of ₹40,000, and sent them door to door to collect voter information in the constituency.
“In Hyderabad Old City, men are not allowed to enter homes to collect details of the electors. Hence, I recruited women who were conversant with the local lingo and could interact and convince the residents to part with information,” Khan says. He spent about ₹60-70 lakh on the entire drive. He claims to have unearthed 1,13,310 ‘bogus voters’ in his constituency alone, the details of which he shared with all the functionaries of the ECI. “Thanks to my fight, a total of 46,000 bogus entries have been added to the Annexure as absentee-shifted-dead voters,” Khan says.
He approached the High Court of Telangana with the list, seeking revision of electoral roll for his constituency. However, the High Court referred him back to the Electoral Registration Officer, who could not verify or effect the changes as the final rolls were already published.
The ASD (absentee-shifted-dead) list is prepared after publication of the final rolls, and used as an Annexure by the respective presiding officers at the time of polling. However, when calculating the polling percentage, the ASD voters are not removed from the final rolls, hence the voter turnout could appear lower than the actual.
“The ASD list is kept confidential and not shared with anybody except the presiding officer. The presiding officer never uses the list, but contends that the polling agents should be able to challenge the bogus voters. The voter information slips did not even have photos of the electors this time, which added to the confusion,” said Jasveen Jairath, a social activist and writer who monitored the polling closely. “In the Old City, the problem is not of people not coming to vote, but of bogus electors turning up to vote,” she says. The lack of confidence in the electoral system has led to the general cynicism that it will be a single party win irrespective of the people’s choice, all due to illegitimate voters becoming legitimate, she alleges.
Old City damper
South of the River Musi is widely referred to as Hyderabad’s Old City, which has been the AIMIM stronghold for the past two to three decades. The seven constituencies where the party is strong, registered less than 50% voter turnout this time.
Amjed Ullah Khan, the former corporator of GHMC and the candidate from the Majlis Bachao Tehreek (MBT) for Yakutpura constituency, has been the sole note of dissonance in the AIMIM’s victory march over the decades. He is also the son of MBT founder, Aman Ullah Khan, a trusted lieutenant of former AIMIM president Sultan Salahuddin Owaisi, who parted ways with the latter after the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition and started his own political outfit.
Khan lost with a wafer thin margin of 878 votes this election, against his opponent and sitting legislator Jaffar Hussain Meraj. “The Old City public has lost faith in its political leadership due to bogus voting. They have been alienated from their representatives,” he says.
The voter turnout did not cross 12% in the Old City, until late afternoon, after which there was a spurt in polling, he says, attributing it to a bogus voting pattern. He has the most severe criticism reserved for the way electoral rolls are prepared. “At home, we are mere 22 electors including the helpers and workers. When we had not got voter information slips, I enquired with the Returning Officer, and the next day, we got slips of 60 voters registered at my address. This has been happening across the Old City for several years, and it goes unquestioned,” Khan says.
Between the nominations and the start of the model code of conduct, every polling booth in the Old City adds up 200-300 voters, he claims, thanks to the provision to accommodate fresh registrations even after the final roll is published. “They bring outsiders from districts such as Nanded and Parbhani and get them registered at random addresses using copies of power bills. The BLOs are outsourced workers, and, at most locations in Old City, belong to MIM cadre. Even otherwise, they are threatened and silenced by the party,” he alleges.
Complaints to the police and election authorities go unheeded, he claims, and says the voter turnout would be limited to 15-20% in constituencies such as Yakutpura and Chandrayangutta if the polling was without bogus voting.
AIMIM party chief Asaduddin Owaisi did not answer the call nor responded to questions, but the police and district electoral authorities vouch for the free and transparent manner the elections were conducted this time. The Commissioner of Police Sandeep Shandilya, appointed just before elections, earned accolades for stringent enforcement of model code of conduct, and incident-free elections.
Rose says the polling was free and fair, and that rectification of errors in the electoral rolls was a continuous process. BLOs paid door to door visits twice and collected data about missing voters, he said and added that going forward, the aim is to remove all the invalid entries from the list during the upcoming Special Summary Revision of Electoral Roll-2024.
