A fresh political dispute over Telangana voter deletions has erupted after state Transport Minister Ponnam Prabhakar accused the BJP of defending the Election Commission of India instead of addressing allegations that genuine voters were removed from electoral rolls.
Prabhakar was responding to remarks by Telangana BJP president N. Ramchander Rao, who had said he accepted the minister’s earlier challenge over the alleged deletion of genuine votes and claimed that deleted names could be added back to the rolls. In a media statement, Prabhakar questioned how a political party could undertake such a process.
“You must stop speaking as if the Election Commission was at your disposal. What does it mean to claim that you will personally have voter names added back into the system if they go missing? Do you intend to act as Election Commission officials yourselves,” Prabhakar asked.
The minister said the Congress was prepared to produce the names of people who had allegedly lost their votes. He said the party’s claims were based on evidence and referred to alleged applications filed by BJP workers in the Musheerabad constituency through Form 7, which is used to request deletion of names from electoral rolls. Prabhakar demanded that the state BJP president respond clearly to the allegation.
The Congress also challenged comments by former Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu, who had defended the Election Commission and described claims of indiscriminate voter deletion as a “misconception”. Pulipati Rajesh Kumar, chairman of the Pradesh Congress Committee’s Election Commission coordination committee, said Naidu had himself received a notice connected to the Special Intensive Revision process seeking his 2002 voter credentials.
Rajesh argued that Naidu should have spoken for voters affected by the process instead of dismissing concerns. He cited a figure of approximately 91 lakh voters allegedly deleted from electoral rolls in West Bengal and claimed that more than 73 lakh names had already been removed in Telangana under the categories of absent, shifted, dead and duplicate.
The figures and allegations cited in the political statements were not independently established in the report. The dispute centres on whether deletions made during electoral-roll revision were supported by proper verification and whether eligible voters have adequate avenues to challenge removals.
The controversy places attention on the administrative process behind voter-list revision. Electoral-roll changes affect residents’ ability to participate in elections, while political parties and election authorities must distinguish between duplicate or ineligible entries and genuine voters who may have moved, been wrongly classified or missed a verification process.
The Congress has demanded explanations from the BJP over the alleged Form 7 applications and has said it will present names of affected voters. The BJP’s response to those specific allegations, as well as the Election Commission’s position on the figures cited, remains central to the continuing dispute.
