Bengaluru: United Bengaluru, a citizens’ forum, submitted a petition to the state election commission on Monday, highlighting alleged discrepancies in the draft voters’ list.
Led by freedom fighter H S Doreswamy, the petition was supported by Citizens’ Action Forum, Bangalore Apartments’ Federation, Namma Bengaluru Foundation and Million Voter Rising, Mahadevapura.
Addressed to Karnataka chief electoral officer (CEO) Sanjiv Kumar, the petition said: “The draft rolls currently published are in the form of a PDF image. This is in contravention of the manual on electoral rolls issued by the Election Commission of India, which requires draft rolls to be published on the chief electoral officer’s official website in PDF format and in text mode. The purpose behind this is to enable citizens to easily search for their data in the rolls. Further, access to the published rolls is Captcha-controlled. Though the rules don’t specifically mention anything about Captcha, they do state that the rolls are public documents, so they should be freely accessible. Entering Captcha is a hindrance in this regard.”
