Bizarre anomalies have been detected in the electoral rolls of Ballia district. The revised rolls include photographs of a scantily-clad woman resembling Sunny leone, apart from an elephant, a pigeon and a deer.
While leone’s photograph appeared next to the name of a 51-year-old woman, an elephant was seen alongside the name of former minister Narad Rai and deer next to Kunwar Ankur Singh. Except the pictures, all other details in the voters’ list are correct, including the house number and locality.
Chief Electoral Officer of UP, l Venkateswarlu said in lucknow on Saturday that the voter IDs of 7-8 persons were tampered with and this was done by one of the operators.
“We found on August 15 that voter IDs of around 7-8 voters were tampered with and their photos were replaced with those of birds and animals. It was clear that this was done by one of our operators, Vishnu Dev Verma,” he said.
The CEO said that in the investigation, a data entry operator was found guilty and an FIR was lodged under sections 419, 420, 467 and 468 of the Indian Penal Code.
He said that the anomalies had been corrected.
The data for voter lists is first provided by booth-level officers appointed by the district administration and then entered and matched online by data entry operators. The final list is cleared by senior officers.
The CEO said that the electoral rolls in all 75 districts of the state were being revised ahead of the 2019 lok Sabha election and the final rolls would be published on September 1.
“To prevent recurrence of such mistakes, district election officers have been directed to ensure intense scrutiny before publication of the final draft of the electoral rolls,” the CEO said.
The anomaly was detected in the revised voter’s list, which was prepared in Ballia Sadar tehsil on the directives of the Election Commission.