It is a clear victory for opposition parties over TRS in Greater Hyderabad, as the voter-verification program went awry at a time when the ruling party is bracing up to wrest Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) in the ensuing elections- first election after the formation of Telangana state.
The Sunil Gupta team, dispatched by Election Commission of India to check the veracity of the charges of a large scale deletion of purportedly hostile voters, mainly the people of Andhra origin, is gathering information from all quarters, official, political leaders and voters on the complaints in GHMC jurisdiction. The team has been flooded with complaints from genuine voters, whose names got deleted by GHMC officials in the ongoing “voter verification” program, the other name for the deletion of ‘hostile’ voters. The team has 14 members including senior officer Ramakanth Pande, additional CEO, Uttar Pradesh. The sustained campaign led by Congress, BJP and TDP appears to be yielding results. Sunil Gupta team reportedly figured out a mess-up in the voter list which include large scale elimination of voters, not following the due process before deleting the names from the list etc. The deletion of name of former LB Nagar MLA Sudheer Reddy and his wife is an indication to the shabby work done under the supervision of two senior IAS officers: one, GHMC commissioner Somesh Kumar and two, CEO Banwarlal. The impact of the arrival of the team was felt immediately. Telangana government removed Somesh Kumar from the responsibilities of GHMC as commissioner and shifted him to not so important Tribal Welfare department.
The shifting out of Somesh Kumar is said to have been done at the behest of Election Commission as it found prima facie case in the complaints of large scale deletion of voters. Another controversial transfer associated with the process was that of Navin Mittal. Somehow it missed the media attention. If nothing improper had happened, there would have been no need for the government to shift Somesh Kumar, who worked more like a political functionary, rather than the member of the ‘steel frame’ of the Indian democracy, is the question being raised by the political parties.
The Sunil Gupta team seems to have a clear instruction from the above. Instead of being carried over by the official reports, Gupta settled down for a professional inquiry. He first got the major stumbling block (Somesh Kumar) removed from the path of inquiry. Later, he held a meeting with representatives of all political parties. He took the clarifications from the GHMC officials involved in the verification of voter list. Then they set off on field visits to areas under various polling stations in Assembly segments that fall in the GHMC . On Saturday the team visited many areas in Sanath Nagar while on Sunday, the 14-member team divided into three sub-teams and undertook field visits in Uppal, Khairatabad, Jubilee Hills, Serilingampalli, Kukatapally assembly segments where a sizable number of people of Andhra and Rayalaseema settled as per the complaints received from the political parties. Political parties say about 49,588 names have been deleted by the GHMC official in Uppal Assembly segment alone. Similarly about 38,000 votes have been removed from the LB Nagal Assembly segment. According to Sudheer Reddy, who represented LB Nagar as Congress MLA, in the united Andhra Pradesh Assembly, majority of the voters removed with the notion that they had voted against TRS in 2014 election. LB Nagar was bagged by TDP in 2014. In a Circle office of GHMC, the EC team found to its surprise heaps of un-dispatched notices. The principal complaint the team received from the voters was that their names had been deleted without informing them or a notice being sent, even though they had been living in the area for the past 15 years without a break. Some teams even visited the house of voters selected at random. All the families they visited figured in the list of the names deleted from the voter list. The team also found that voters had been staying in the same address for ages.
In the backdrop of massive deletion of names by the officials, who are alleged to have connived with politicians, all opposition parties demanded the suspension of Somesh Kumar and transfer of Banwarlal for their acts of commission and omission. They also demanded that the GHMC election be conducted on the basis of voter list used for 2014 general election.
It is too early to speculate on the possible recommendation of the team, which is going to submit a report on the complaints to the EC in a week or two. However, the arrival of EC team in Hyderabad and removal of high profile and influential GHMC commissioner from the job is a clear victory for the opposition parties in Hyderabad, where T-sentiment is minimal as indicated by the Assembly results of 2014. Hyderabad city was unshaken by the pink Tsunamy that swept across the Telangana outside Hyderabad. This exactly is the reason, the parties alleged, for the TRS government’s attempt to tinker with the voter list in the name of verification of voters for GHMC elections.
