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Again, funnily, I learnt just a while back that the entries marked "Deleted" was allegedly a handiwork of the local corporator(Ward no. 32) in Mysore.

Find out about his antecedents. The subversion of the democracy is done by every damn politcal party. :(

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Booth Capturing, the old style of gerry-mandering during elections has given way to this new form of manipulation !

This needs to be RTI'd to find out more & bring the culprits to justice.

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Dear All

Your analysed report to Prajegalu is highly appreciated.  During my 40 years of central government service and having interacted with umpteen number of high level officers, I never had an occasion when a bureaucrat had ggiven a straight forward reply.  But yours is a total exception.  Keep up the good work Sir and you have miles to go.

Mr.Mani has served a volley to the court of Prajas.  It is our duty to play the ball within the ambits of the democratic game.  Shall we? 

Life could be beautiful (conditions attached) !!   

With such practive administration that is requesting for citizens help, any condition can be overcome and we can make Prajas' life that much beautiful.

Let us respond positively.

-Vasanthkumar Mysoremath

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Dear friends,

Greetings to you all!

At the outset let me make it clear that i am not trying to defend those govt officials (including me!) who are/were responsible for the deletion of names of the genuine voters. I fully recognise the agony and disappointment of the voters when they can’t vote. I am also aware of the other consequences of denial of vote in a democracy like ours.

I just want to bring before you the different aspects involved in this 'deletion of votes'. Kindly have an open mind when you read further. THIS IS WRITTEN IN THE INTEREST OF BRINGING IMPROVED AWARENESS IN THE GENERAL PUBLIC AND IS NOT DIRECTED AGAINST ANY INDIVIDUAL/S, POLITICAL PARTY/TIES OR ANYONE REMOTELY INVOLVED IN THE ELECTROL PROCESS.

The revision of the roll is done by the district administration under the orders of the ECI. The district administration doubles as Election administration also. (It is like the Geography teacher taking Geology; can manage it, but doesn’t have the expertise!)

As mentioned, the district administration is not an expert in data management, but it manages a database of 21 lakh voters (records), having 10-15 fields!  Apart from this, the district admn also allows for 'continuous updation' of the Rolls, as and when the citizens apply for addition/deletion, thru the Taluka office/corporation offices.

The Roll registration officer for the city is the Commissioner of the MCC, while for the rural areas it is the Tahsildar.  The officers have to appoint one official per booth, called the Booth level Official (BLO). This has been the recent initiative by the ECI. Earlier we had one official for 3-4 booths!

At the field level there are inefficiencies, as in the case of any huge organisation. The BLOs are normally primary school teachers, water man, bill collector etc. At that level they do not realise the importance of the roll completely.  As we all know, quite a number of them are also inefficient, demotivated and do not take the job seriously. Thus the deletions at times may not be genuine.

One may ask, 'what are the senior officers doing? And why can’t the system is devised in a way that it doesn’t allow the subjectiveness of the BLO?’ The answer is: The senior officers are so few (1 DC, and 12 senior officers to manage 21 lakh records, that too part time!).

Regarding checks and balances, the ECI came up with beautiful system of asking the Political parties to appoint one agent from their party for every polling booth, called as Booth Level Agent (BLA).  Apart from that, the additions/deletions are accepted ONLY after it is displayed in the notice board, and objections are called for.

In reality, the political parties are so far not serious about appointing BLAs. Nor the citizens take pains to check the notice board in the Taluka office.  The general apathy about the Roll during non-election time is palpable. It is just left to the official machinery!

One might ask, what to the senior officers do? What if his mistake is caught by the senior officer, as it happens once in a while? Maximum is that the BLO is suspended for a month or so. Everybody feels that it’s a too harsh a punishment for just making an 'error' in his part-time job. And he goes scot free!

The electoral system can't escape the general inefficiency in the governance on in any organisation. One might ask, 'But it appears that the problems are more in Election'. I beg to differ. Indeed the mistakes are far less in Election process, which in any other field of governance, thanks to the sword of ECI hanging over the head of all officials!

The case of Mysore:

Lets take Mysore for example. Mysore has 21 lakh voters. How many mistakes in that? The deletions in the last 6 months (November to April) are around 43,000 in the city. But the additions are around 63,000. Thus the net is positive. Among the 43,000 'deletions' only around 3,900 are real deletions, and balance is 'shifting' the voters from one polling Booth to another. (Read, Ravi's article in Praja.mysore on how his parents were shifted from one booth to another!)

Why shifting? That is done to rationalise the polling booths, and also during the delimitation exercise. In an ideal situation, we need to do go for a spatial study of combining various logical parameters.  But, currently, in absence of a detailed spatial data, it is done manually by the BLOs. Now you know how the manual errors have crept in. Adding to this is the mistakes encountered in data entry of this huge data. The errors can be minimised only when we get the best in the market, but then it cost a lot!

Considering all these constraints, the error of margin, 0.18% is seems to be not away from the mark. The number of deletions for the city of Mysore are neatly tabulated in the presentation available at: www.mysoreelections.com <http://www.mysoreelections.com/>

The ratio is approximately 0.18%. (3,900/21,00,000). The deletions are arranged in descending order. You will notice the huge deletions; more than 100 are only in 10-20 booths. So it is not right to say '1000 are deleted'. But, yes, 100s are deleted, of which many of them may be incorrect deletions.  We may note that, the figures make it very clear that there are no biases in the deletion like 'minority' etc. In Mysore, the maximum deletions are in Chamaraja constituency, which has fewer minorities and fewer slums.)

I am not supporting any mistake made by the govt officials. But just want to make the facts very clear. Also, the opinion that 'deletions' are responsible for low percentage of polling, is taking things too much. The 'deletions', as explained, matter only 0.18%. But, yes, incorrect deletion is bad, because, it robs the citizen of something which is priceless.

Now, what is the solution? Needless to say, it involves improving the governance in general. As short term solution, we may go for more VFCs round the clock, as planned in B'lore. May be dedicated officials, to take care of the Roll, rather than part time staff, who are always hard pressed for time.

Notwithstanding anything, I sincerely regret the inconvenience caused to the voters in this regard. I empathise with them and will do all to reduce such errors. I attended almost all calls that day; 135 calls, of which 90% are about deletions.

It is the responsibility of all of us to ensure a correct Roll. The admn has to take the lead. We are ready. Are you ready? Will there be more persons like Dr. Mysoremath, or Dr. Bapu Sathyanarayana, or Erram or Maj. Gen Vombatkere, or Bhamy Shenoy or Muralidhar who are ready to give their time and energy for such activities? Can the citizen committees give their input?

In any election process, there appear to be three main stake holders. The citizens, who vote; the political parties who require the votes; and the admn which enables and regulates the process. We, from the admn are ready to have a brainstorming session on this. Will the other two stake holders volunteer?

Warm regards,

Manivannan

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