Mumbai voters miffed over missing names

“I am very disappointed,” said Deepak Parekh, on his name being missing from the voter’s list.

The HDFC Chairman had gone to the polling booth on Peddar Road in tony south Mumbai in the morning, only to find his name and those of his wife and son also missing from the list.

“Even our servant who stays with us has her name, but all of ours names are missing,” Parekh rued.

His grouse was shared by several people across Mumbai, as citizens who came out to vote ended up dejected to find that their names were missing from the list.

Kirit Shah, a five-time voter from Mumbai North constituency, ran after officials for about three hours with no luck. “How can my name get deleted just like that? And why is there no one responsible for it? I want to exercise my vote but I cannot. This is a conspiracy by political parties,” a clearly frustrated Shah said.

In South Mumbai’s Malabar Hill, Huzefa Roowala said: “I have a voter’s id card and all the required ids. They're not letting me vote because my name is not on the list. My father's name is on the list and so is my mother's. We live in the same house, so how can they make mistakes like these?”

Others from Huzefa’s residential society also met with the same fate, as they turned up early in the morning only to find out that their names were missing.

In Pune, which went to the polls last week, several voters similarly found their names missing.

Dejected voters in Mumbai were quick to allege a ploy by the Congress-NCP to keep out potential BJP-Shiv Sena voters.

BJP candidate from Mumbai North Central Poonam Mahajan said: “It’s shameful that voters come all the way to vote and find their names to be deleted.

“There are people who have voted in 2009 and 2012 but could not vote today. What is the Election Commission doing? We are going to write to them.”

AAP candidate from Mumbai North East Medha Patkar alleged that 2.46 lakh voter names were deleted in the constituency from where she contested.

She questioned how many of these omissions were genuine and how many mala fide.

In the 2009 elections, the difference between the winner and the runner-up in two of the six city constituencies was less than 6,000 votes.

The maximum difference between the winner and runner-up across any constituency in the city was 1,74,555 votes in 2009.

Congress candidate from South Mumbai Milind Deora declined to comment on the controversy. Election Commission officials were not available for comment.

Voting percentage across the city was 53.1 per cent.

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