Community activist Ganga Sridhar of Mandaveli received a strange letter from the Election Department recently. They had spotted her name in multiple addresses and wanted her to clarify asap.
“I receive this letter on October 28 by registered post and they want me to go back into the past and send them a response by October 7. How idiotic can this be?”, asks Ganga.
The letter shows the first of two entries to be a ‘Ganga’ residing in Tambaram but the photo there is of a different woman. The second entry is correct and Ganga says this data has allowed her to vote in past elections. “I have been residing at the Mandaveli address for past 18 years and now this,” says Ganga.
She intends to anyway pursue this issue. “I tried calling them on 1950, the voter helpline number; they put me in an automated queue for some time and disconnected”, said Ganga.
Ganga says that in the last election, there was a mess up in the case of two twin girls of her area who are identical twins and first time voters. Only one of them got to get vote as they had different names but their faces looked the same and address and date of birth identical.
Explains Ganga, “They were also asked to send a form filled for clarifications and send it by post to indicate that they are 2 different voters: they did all that but still only one of them figured in the electoral list.”
- First file photo is for representation only
