The satan within the electoral rolls
In December 2024, digital media outlet Newslaundry revealed a three-part report on the deletion of voters from electoral rolls in three Lok Sabha constituencies—Meerut and Farrukhabad in Uttar Pradesh and Chandni Chowk in Delhi. The survey was performed over three months after Lok Sabha outcomes had been declared on 4 June.
The Newslaundry staff led by Sumedha Mittal spoke to voters whose names had been deleted, to booth-level officers (BLOs) deployed to knock on doorways to crosscheck claims of change of tackle or dying and to Election Fee officers. The stories, which have been up on the web site for greater than three weeks, appear to have elicited no rebuttal from the Election Fee regardless of the damning particulars they comprise.
In Meerut, the staff found voter playing cards with the tackle given as ‘Uttar Pradesh, Jhuggi or Naya’—86 such on voter lists at sales space #305 of Meerut Cantonment. In the identical sales space, round 240 voters are registered with RHA Colony as their tackle. The colony, nevertheless, doesn’t exist.
Vikas Chaudhary, postman on the head submit workplace in Meerut Cantonment advised the staff, “You’re proper—RHA Colony doesn’t exist… bogus voters have change into a giant downside throughout Meerut. A few months again, I used to be tasked with distributing new voter playing cards despatched by the EC, however needed to dump 1000’s of them on the native election workplace as I couldn’t discover their addresses.”
One other report famous: ‘Three generations of Amjad’s household dwell within the dense cluster of homes often called Haveli Azam Khan within the Chandni Chowk constituency. The neighbourhood is strolling distance from Delhi’s historic Jama Masjid… 23 family members are registered voters at polling sales space #10. However in the course of the Lok Sabha elections in 2024, Amjad found that he was among the many 20 individuals from his household who had been struck off the voters listing on the pretext that they’d shifted residence.’
