Telangana CEO submits report to HC on Munugode voters' list

Hyderabad, Oct 14: Telangana's Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) on Friday submitted a report to the Telangana High Court about revision of voters' list in Munugode Assembly constituency, where a bypoll is slated to be held on November 3.

The CEO informed the court that the number of voters in the constituency stood at 2,38,759 as on October 11, 2022, and on October 12, 2018, the number of voters in the constituency was 2,14,847. Thus, there was a net addition of 23,912 voters during the last four years.

The CEO said 25,013 applications were received from new voters since January this year. Out of the new applications, 12,249 were accepted while 7,247 were rejected. The remaining 5,517 applications are pending.

The court was told that the process of additions, deletions and corrections to the voters' list will be completed on Friday.

The CEO submitted report to a bench of Chief Justice Ujjal Bhuyan and Justice C.V. Bhaskar Reddy, hearing a writ petition filed by the BJP alleging irregularities in revision of voters' list.

The bench observed that there appears to be no unusual increase in the number of voters but made it clear that it will not pronounce orders till the final voters' list is submitted.

The court directed the CEO to submit the final voters' list and adjourned the hearing to October 21.

The court on Thursday had declined to instruct the election authorities not to declare the voters' list.

BJP secretary G. Premender Reddy, who filed the petition, alleged discrepancies in revision of the voters list.

Appearing on behalf of the petitioner, Rachna Reddy had submitted to the court that there are apprehensions about possible fake voters in the new list as nearly 25,000 voters were included in August and September.

The Election Commission's counsel Avinash Desai argued that the new voter enrollment was undertaken in a transparent manner.

He also argued that the petitioner's plea not to release the list of voters for the by-election was against statutory provisions of the Representation of People's Act under which the voters' lists are prepared.