On April 19, during polling day in Nagpur, thousands of voters, primarily from the Muslim community, voiced their unease upon discovering that their names had been removed from the electoral rolls.
The city president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Jitendra Kukde alleged over 1.4 lakh voters were unable to find their names on the lists.
“I came to know that the names were deliberately deleted,” Kukde said.
The residents also claimed that some people who were dead were still on the list while the names of the living had been deleted.
At polling stations, it witnessed anger among the voters who had to leave without voting as their names were absent from the Electoral rolls.
Akram Khan, a resident, expressed his frustration by saying, “I have voted in all previous elections, so why is my name missing? Somebody will have to take responsibility for this?”
Another voter, Mohammad Adeeb Qureshi, a resident of Mominpura missed out his name and asked him to inquire with the collector’s office.
In North Nagpur, a social worker Shahnawaz Sheikh said names of more than 50 voters were missing from a single booth in Indira Mata Nagar.
The former NMC corporates Rashmi Uikey Dheuvey and Manoj Sangoletoo alleged over 5,000 names were missing from electoral rolls in the west and North Nagpur assembly constituencies.
Many voters in central and North Nagpur spent a lot of time finding their names, some travelled a long distance to cast their vote.
In addition, the Lok Sabha elections 2024 are being held from 19 April to 1 June 2024 in seven phases. The Election Commission notified for the first phase that was scheduled for April 19 across 102 parliamentary constituencies over 21 states and Union territories of the nation.
