Names go missing from electoral rolls

PANAJI

: Samina Aslam Khan and her husband left their children with relatives in Curtorim and travelled around 10km away to their polling booth in Fatorda on Tuesday morning. Imagine their dismay when they were told their names had been deleted from the electoral roll because they had shifted residences two years ago.


“I had voted from this polling booth in the 2017 assembly elections, so I had no idea why my name had been deleted. The government has our phone numbers as all our data is linked with our Aadhaar cards. Why can’t we be informed before our names are deleted?” a dejected Samina said.

She explained that she hadn’t applied in Curtorim because she was yet to get a house number from the panchayat. “I had heard that the booth level officer (BLO) there was not accepting the land survey number as proof,” she said.

Similarly, senior citizen Bambina Monteiro, who works as a helper with theSisters of Charity at Hospicio, Margao, was sent by elections officials from one polling station to another in the summer heat to ascertain where she had been registered.

Chief electoral officer Kunal said, “We conducted an extensive voter education drive before the polls. They should have verfied their names.”