The Karnataka High Court on Friday ordered issue of notice to the Election Commission of India (ECI) and the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) on a PIL petition filed by a residents’ group seeking directions to evolve a transparent mechanism to process applications for including names in electoral rolls; to provide online facility to track status of such applications; and to give an acknowledgement for receipt of applications, and other pleas.
A Division Bench comprising acting Chief Justice H.G. Ramesh and Justice P.S. Dinesh Kumar passed the order on the petition filed by city-based Whitefield Rising Trust.
The petitioner has complained that a large number of residents in Whitefield and surrounding areas were unable to register their names in the voters’ list of Mahadevapura Assembly constituency for the past three years owing to deliberate inaction, which smacks of malafide intentions of BBMP officials.
Alleging that the officials were giving several frivolous reasons: hundreds of applications manually submitted are lost; and non-availability of staff, it has been contended in the petition that the conduct of officials of the BBMP ex-facie (on the face of it) are acting in excess of their authority in law.
“The actions/inactions of officials of the BBMP seem to indicate that they are prejudiced against a particular section of residents of Mahadevapura, and are making a deliberate attempt to keep them out of the electoral rolls,” while pointing out that names of over 4,000 voters from “politically-active pockets” were included in the voters’ list of the constituency, while over 2,000 votes of residents living around Whitefield areas have not been included.
The petitioner has also sought a direction from the authorities not to finalise the voters’ list of Mahadevapura constituency till all applications submitted for inclusion of names in the list are processed and final decision is taken.
