Election Commission admits mistake on its part over Mumbai electoral roll fiasco

NEW DELHI: Admitting there was "indifference" on the part of poll officers in Maharashtra, Election Commissioner HS Brahma told ET that the large number of deletions from the electoral roll in the state was "unfortunate" and that the poll watchdog regrets the error.

Brahma, however, added that the EC is not empowered to allow those left out to now vote for the Lok Sabha elections. "We accept the error on part of our staff. It's surprising that names of people who have been regularly voting were also removed from the list. Some of them are well known personalities who we all know are alive and still reside in the city. The supervision and verification has been faulty," Brahma, who is one of the three election commissioners, told ET.

"But under law there is no way that we can now allow them to vote. All we can do right now is to ensure the errors are rectified before the Maharashtra Assembly elections, which are just a few months away," he added.

As per law, new names cannot be added to the electoral roll for a particular election, irrespective of whether state or central polls, after the nomination process is over.

A group of aggrieved citizens have threatened to go to court after thousands found their names wrongfully deleted from the voters' list on Thursday when Mumbai voted for Lok Sabha elections. These included well known personalities such as HDFC chairman Deepak Parekh, former union minister and lawyer Ram Jethmalani and Marathi actor Atul Kulkarni.


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"We can't stop people from going to court but once again I apologise and reiterate that we can't do anything about this now," the Election Commissioner said, adding that a part of the onus is also on the voters as they should have pointed out the error on March 9, the day designated to verify whether a voter's name figured on the final voters' list.

The large number of deletions, approximately 3 lakh for Mumbai city, was part of EC's special drive to update photo electoral rolls and carry out the long pending clean up the voters list of Maharashtra. According to EC officials the clean up was undertaken to remove names of voters who have either been absent for too long, dead or have moved out of the state.

Mumbai recorded 53% turnout on Thursday.