In this episode, hosts Dhanya Rajendran and Pooja Prasanna are joined by The Reporter Collective’s founding editor Nitin Sethi, The News Minute’s Nandini Chandrashekar and activist Tara Krishnaswamy.
The panel first delves into concerns about manipulation of electoral rolls. Nitin says, "Voter list manipulation has been part of the game for a fairly long while. If you look at election records, you’ll ghost voters up to two, three lakhs in a population of twenty lakhs”. On how technology allows “rigorous manipulation” at a greater scale, he says: “If any party, with a considerably large number of workers, tries to do this, they can affect it at scale”. “At this moment, we do not have adequate safeguards to ensure the credibility of the electoral process”, he warns.
Nandini raises concerns about voter disenfranchisement, pointing out systemic issues within the electoral process. She says: "Faulty voter rolls and procedural errors deny citizens their right to vote effectively. These errors severely hinder democratic participation."
The discussion then moves to policies on governance issues that plague Bengaluru.
Criticising the Greater Bengaluru Governance Bill, Tara says: "This Bill centralises administrative control instead of empowering local bodies, undermining local governance and accountability. It moves us further away from decentralisation".
Tune in for an in-depth discussion.
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Audio Timecodes
00:00:00 – Intro
00:03:17 – Reporter's Collective
00:01:40 – Announcements
00:10:20 – Headlines
00:13:09 – ‘Manipulation’ of electoral rolls
00:44:59 – Greater Bengaluru Governance Bill
01:07:15 – Recommendations
References
Powertrip: Karnataka Min’s hand in Ranya gold smuggling & ED raids at TASMAC
TNM investigation: Armed with govt order, Bengaluru NGO steals voter data
Chilume trained workers at BJP ward office until Nov 17, 15 days after cancellation
BJP is pushing for thousands of voters to be deleted in a Muslim-dominated Bengaluru area
Questions swirl around committee that certifies India’s Electronic Voting Machines
Greater Governance Bill gives greater powers to Bengaluru legislators
Recommendation
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Nandini Chandrashekar
Tara Krishnaswamy
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Pooja Prasanna
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Produced by Bhuvan Malik, edited by Jaseem Ali, written by Maria Teresa Raju.
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