Over 7.3 Million Voters Marked as ADS in Telangana, Notices to be Issued to 9.2 Million

Hyderabad, August 18: More than 7.3 million voters in Telangana have been marked as ADS (Absent, Deceased, Shifted, Duplicate). During the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR), notices will be sent to 9.2 million voters due to discrepancies.

The Election Commission of India published the draft voter list following a door-to-door enumeration conducted on Monday.

Out of 33,826,448 voters, 7,339,235 have been identified as ADS. This includes 5.746 million voters who were permanently shifted or found absent. Election officials also identified 922,000 deceased individuals, while 670,000 voters were registered at multiple locations.

Chief Electoral Officer C. Sudarshan Reddy informed the media that notices would be issued to 9.2 million voters.

Approximately 6 million voters will receive notices due to discrepancies in their names or those of their family members, or any irregularities in age. An additional 3.2 million voters have been marked as those whose names could not be linked to the 2002 voter list.

He stated that census forms have been collected from 26,487,213 voters, accounting for 78.30 percent.

Booth Level Officers (BLOs) could not locate the remaining 7.339 million voters (21.7 percent) because they either became voters in other states/Union Territories, were not found, did not submit forms by August 10, or were unwilling to register for other reasons.

The SIR (period for filing objections and electoral registration) was conducted from June 25 to August 10.

The Chief Minister clarified that during the claim and objection period from August 17 to September 16, actual voters can be re-added to the voter list using Form-6 and the prescribed declaration. Names of voters found registered at multiple locations will be retained at only one location.

The draft voter list has been published by the respective Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) for all 119 Assembly constituencies in the state.

For voters whose names are not included in the draft voter list, the list of absent/shifted/deceased/duplicate voters has been displayed on the notice boards of the respective ERO/AERO offices, village panchayat/municipality offices, and polling stations. This is to inform the public about the voter list and potential reasons for their names not being included. These lists are also available on the CEO’s website and the respective DEO’s website.