Articles by PG Bhat

Final electoral rolls are out, in the poll-bound Karnataka. There have been serious issues in the electoral rolls in the past, and this time is no exception. The quality issues in the electoral rolls of Bengaluru published at ceokarnataka.kar.nic.in website on February 28, 2018 are of the nature that could lead to denial of voting rights to many citizens. Following is a glimpse of voters’ woes in Karnataka ahead of the assembly elections. The Electoral Rolls Management System (ERMS) is getting worse in some areas though there are improvements in some other areas. Data on voters of Karnataka is officially…

Citizen Matters had published a story 'Bengaluru on poll mode: Get registered as voter for 2018 elections'. But unfortunately, CEO-Karnataka website is a mess and the authorities are defensive. Even when you use their URL, it takes you to some other site or gives 404 error. Only Kannada version of the new rolls is published. They are CAPTCHA-protected and are image files. Even if we download them after entering CAPTCHA, we cannot search for data in the file. Extraction is difficult. I have to work on the task once I get the English version. I cannot find my section (the…

January 25th is observed as National Voters' Day by the Election Commission of India (ECI). Does it include real voters? I doubt. As mentioned in my last blog post, sloganeering and “celebrations” have started on January 14th. Some reality checks on the rolls of Bengaluru Legislative Assemblies, published on January 11th 2016: Was there an exodus in parts of Mahadevpura? ECI rules require District Electoral Officers (DEO) to examine cases of deletions exceeding 2% and additions exceeding 4%. Deletion is more than 2% in 152 parts. Top 7 of them are from Mahadevapura constituency, with more than 20% deletions each. 266…

  Chief Electoral Officer of Karnataka (CEO-KA) has published the list of applications for inclusion in the electoral rolls, ahead of BBMP elections in Bengaluru. 3,66,640 of 4,65,377 applications are approved. However, a search for voter names (with relative names) as given in the list show that more than 99% of these names are not added to the voter list for the forthcoming BBMP elections. Either the citizens are not included as voters though their applications are shown approved or the names are entered differently from what is shown in the approved list. Of 58,097 applications for deletion of names…

Google search gives about 8,17,000 results for a ghar wapsi (home coming or re-conversion of religion). Member of Parliament Sakshi Maharaj says, ” [it] is no conversion but just a process to guide these people to the faith where they actually belong.” Budhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Islam and Christianity and many other religions all grew by converting believers of other religions. Conversions from these religions would then be ghar wapsi. However, adding fuel to fire, All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief and Hyderabad MP, Asaduddin Owaisi, told in a public speech that every person is born a Muslim and later converted to other faiths. Thus…

These days, news reports in Bengaluru regularly talk of some good work done by or statements from the Chief Electoral Officer of Karnataka. He is getting excellent coverage for right reasons. He has been strict and vigilant about malpractices in light of electoral code of conduct. He is acting boldly, befitting his position. I admire this. In Bangalore alone 8.08 lakh new voters were enrolled in about 45 days, since February 1. This is laudable. On National Voters Day (25 Jan 2014) President of India honoured him for achieving the highest Elector to Population ratio. When we bask in these…

Chief Election Officer of Karnataka published a new version of Electoral Rolls on 3 November 2013, on his website. My observations here are limited to the electoral rolls of 28 constituencies of Bengaluru. Data quality of the rolls has improved compared with the version published in May 2013. 240 of the 370 voters below age 18 were infants at age 0 and age 1. They have all grown up and become 18 to 98 year old in the new list. Interestingly 57% of them are 23 year old now, ready to register in matrimonial sites. Did the AEROs check the…

Only six states of the country have Legislative Councils in addition to Legislative Assemblies. Karnataka is one among them. Assembly and Council together form the legislature. MLCs have almost equal authorities, opportunities and responsibilities as MLAs. There have been several prominent ministers from the Council. Common man does not vote in legislative council elections. Legislative Councils have separate electoral rolls and constituencies different from Assembly Elections. 75 seats in legislative council of Karnataka are divided as: Teachers constituency - 7 Graduate constituency - 7 Nominated by Governor - 11 Elected by MLAs - 25 Local Authorities constituency - 25 Teachers'…

One of the banes of electoral rolls in the country is the rampant duplicate entries. Voter records are duplicated (a) within the same voter list, (b) in some other voter list within the constituency, (c) in other constituencies of the state or (d) in other states. For the past four years CEO-Karnataka has been telling that they have great software using fuzzy logic, capable of identifying all kinds of duplicates. CEO also told in February 2013 that his organisation deleted about 65,000 duplicate records identified by software and considered that there are no more duplicate entries. However, in the electoral…

Last December, Smart Vote and other organisations had campaigned for extending the deadline for voter registration. This seems to have paid off, as some 7.5 lakh voters enrolled themselves in the list, in December-January alone. Smart Vote had got people registered directly, and also created awareness among the public. The registration drive continues.Around one lakh applications are still pending, as they are yet to be verified and updated; BBMP had promised to complete this by March 10th. Our sample checks show that this is not complete yet. We will discuss this in a meeting with BBMP on March 13th.The CEO…