The Weekend Leader - Mass deletion of voter names in Kanyakumari, conspiracy alleged

Mass deletion of voter names in Kanyakumari, conspiracy alleged

G Babu Jayakumar

20-April-2019

The anger that exploded in individuals at polling booths on the coastal belt of Kanyakumari district when thousands of voters were turned away on the pretext that their names did not figure in the electoral list on Thursday has gathered storm and turned into a collective rage with the people seeing a major conspiracy behind the mass deletion of names.

As a Chennai-based advocate, who hails from Thoothur village in Kanyakumari district, said about 40,000 names were missing in the list and the deletions were ludicrous. “In one home, the name of the husband working abroad is in the list, but the name of the wife living in the same house is missing. In another family, the father and mother were allowed to vote and the children were sent back. There was no logic in the deletions,” he told The Weekend Leader.

BJP's Kanyakumari candidate Pon Radhakrishnan (far right) with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP Tamil Nadu President Tamilisai Soundararajan at an election rally in Madurai (Photos: Suresh Kumar) 


There seems to be a pattern in the selection of the areas for mass deletion of names, said the advocate, now in Thoothur. All the areas were populated by people from the fishing community who were angry with the incumbent Member of Parliament, Pon Radhakrishnan, who is also a Union Minister of State in the Narendra Modi government, for various reasons.

Thoothur was one village that was hit hard by Cyclone Ockhi in November 2017. Since the local MP did not provide them succor for their sufferings and failed to arrange for compensation for damages, the people had been fuming and waiting for a chance to teach him a lesson when the elections came.

Similarly, the people of Kadiapatnam village have been having a running feud with some people, reportedly with connections with the BJP, in a neighbouring locality. The people of the coastal village had bought a piece of land in the locality to drill a bore well as ground water in their village has depleted. Since the group of men was drawing water in the locality and selling it in other places by transporting them in water tankers, they fought with the people of Kadiapatnam, where at least 950 villagers lost their franchise.

Another area that suffered large scale deletion was Inayam, where a dream project of Radhakrishnan was thwarted by the people. “The BJP was aware that we would not vote for Radhakrishnan since he gave us sleepless nights with his plan to build a harbor that would have displaced most of us,” said a fisherman from the village, which lost many votes.

All the people who had been complaining about the lost vote had voted last in 2016. A voters list was prepared by the Election Commission in January 2019 and distributed to many stakeholders including sitting MLAs in the district. Then another list was prepared after 30 March before the final list was brought out on April 8. People alleged that there were discrepancies between the January and March lists itself, pointing to a conspiracy.

Some people say that the BJP, which has been involved in the deletion of names of Muslim voters all over India, had targeted the fishermen population in Kanyakumari district. Since all of them are Roman Catholics the BJP might have suspected they might not vote for Radhakrishnan, they said, adding that even this removal of 40,000 votes would not help him anyway as he is bound to lose the election with a much larger margin in view of his unpopularity.

Social activist and former IAS officer, M G Devasahayam, a resident of Nagercoil, has been advising those who have lost their votes to find out the reason for the deletion from the government through a RTI application. He said apart from the reports that names were deleted in the Assembly segments of Killiyur (about 14,000), Nagercoil (about 8,000), Colachel (9,000) and Vilavankodu (3000), there is also a report that 10,000 names were added in Padmanabhapuram segment

Padmanabhapuram Assembly constituency, which is considered the hotbed of Hindutva politics in the district, had returned the first BJP MLA, C Velayutham, to the Tamil Nadu Assembly in 1996.

Pon Radhakarishnan with his supporters in Kanyakumari


Devasahayam is now involved in collecting a booth-wise list of names deleted to enable an official enquiry into the issue. Another lapse on the part of the election officials that had been brought to his attention was the non-distribution of booth slips. Some 30 to 40 per cent of the booth slips were not distributed to the voters though they were generated and printed, he said. This is seen by many people as a ploy to dissuade middle class voters from going to the polling booth at all, fearing that their names might not be in the list.

However, the general feeling is that the Congress candidate of Kanyakumari district, H Vasanthakumar, contesting the election in alliance with the DMK, Communist parties and VCK, would sail through. For in the communally polarized district, where the minority population is over 50 per cent, the BJP candidate has less hope, what with the traditional Congress, DMK and Communist votes too going to his opponent.

Radhakrishnan had also earned the ire of the Hindu Nadars, who had been his main support base, after the neglect of the inland people affected by Cyclone Okhi. Acres and acres of plantain, coconut, cardamom, rubber and other trees were uprooted in the calamity, which Radhakrishnan did not address adequately, the people said.



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