Entries such as “Ram ne Yadav ko maara” and “Ram ne Sharma ko maara” appearing as voters' names, and “B.Com” recorded instead of a voter's father's name, surfaced in the electoral rolls for the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council (MLC) elections, prompting a clarification from the Election Commission of India, The Hindu reported.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Electoral Officer Navdeep Rinwa on Thursday acknowledged the errors, saying 158 entries out of 14,81,310 electors — yaani about 14.81 lakh voters — registered across the graduates' and teachers' constituencies for 11 seats contained details that appeared “unusual”. He said the errors formed a very small proportion of the roll and that in a few cases they were related to translation using software introduced to prepare the rolls online, The Hindu reported. SabrangIndia reported the same figure and said officials responsible for preparing and checking the records have been asked for explanations.
For the first time in Uttar Pradesh, the rolls for the graduates' and teachers' constituencies were prepared digitally, replacing the earlier manual system at district level. The platform, developed by the Electoral Office's IT team in about four months, handles registration, application processing, approval and rejection, duplicate checking, serialisation and download of voter lists. Mr Rinwa said the software was designed to transcribe names entered in English into Hindi script, but in some cases it translated the words instead: if “Ramhit Yadav” was mistakenly entered as “Ram hit Yadav”, it could render in Hindi as “Ram ne Yadav ko maara”. He said the errors could have been corrected using the edit option but some remained in the final list, and that the “B.Com” entry appeared to be human error or carelessness, The Hindu reported.
Following complaints from political parties and the circulation of the irregular lists on social media, Mr Rinwa ordered an investigation, and an inquiry by Jhansi Divisional Commissioner Vimal Kumar Dubey confirmed the errors in the voter list, The Hindu reported.
Mr Rinwa directed district authorities to ensure that no eligible voter is denied the vote because of clerical or printing errors, instructing presiding officers to verify documents and allow eligible voters to cast their votes, and said District Magistrates would be held responsible if anyone was turned away on such grounds. Voting for the five graduates' and six teachers' constituencies was held on Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., with more than 14.81 lakh voters eligible at 2,697 polling stations in 72 districts and 152 candidates in the fray, The Hindu reported.