Lakhs of Muslim are missing from voters’ list: NGO

Bengaluru: According to a New Delhi-based NGO, about 18 lakh Muslim voters are either missing from the recently updated voters’ list or they don’t have voter ID cards issued in their name for the Karnataka Assembly election 2018.

Dr Abusaleh Shariff has begun a campaigh to rectify this error. He heads The Centre for Research and Debates in Development Policy (CRDDP) and is a renowned economist and member of the Justice Sachar Committee

The CRDDP have identified 16 Karnataka constituencies from which the names of 1.28 lakh voters are missing from the list. Based in that number they have estimated that 15 lakh would be missing from the 224 Karnataka constituencies, inform Khalid Saifullah, Research Associate and COO of CRDDP.

This variance was found after they compared the 2011 census data with the voters’ list that was published on Feb. 28, 2018. The data was downloaded as PDF files, converted into excel format and based on an algorithm the Muslim names were sorted out. They found out that according to the 2011 census data, the Shivajinagar constituency had 4.3% of single households among the total 18,453 Muslim households. But, more than 8,900 households have only one registered voter in their house which amounts to around 40% of the total Muslim household, informed Saifullah.

So the organization has developed a website ( missingmuslimvoters.com) and an Android app (Muslim Voters) to organize and educate the people. This campaign is voluntary and they ask the people of Karnataka to register with their app to help the missing voters to enroll. Once people register as volunteers in the app, they will receive details of missing voters in the neighbourhood whom they can help to enroll.

Missing names on the voters’ list is a repeating phenomenon in Karnataka. Many complaints were registered during the BBMP elections of 2010 and 2015 and the General Elections of 2014. About 7,000 to 8,000 names were missing from the Dasarahalli constituency list in 2015, claimed MLA SR Vishwanath. Congress had protested in 2009 over “deleting” voters “especially those belonging to the Muslim community” in Hubballi. That same year Congress and BJP had accused BJP over 14,000 missing names in Tumkuru, according to the report.