Three crore Muslims and four crore Dalits missing from electoral rolls, study by software wiz finds.
According to 38-year-old software wiz Khalid Saifullah, almost 3 crore Muslims out of 11 crore eligible voters in the country are missing from the electoral rolls.
Saifullah, the founder of the Missing Voter App and CEO of the Hyderabad based RayLabs undertook a study to find out how many Muslim and Dalit voters existed or were missing from the voting list. He found that 15 per cent of all voters and 25 per cent Muslims are not present on the electoral list. Therefore approximately 12.7 crores of all voters and three crore Muslims will not be able to vote in the May 2019 Lok Sabha elections. His study also found that 4 crore Dalits out of some 20 crore eligible Dalit voters were missing from the rolls.
At the 3rd National Leadership Summit 2019, India Islamic Cultural Centre, New Delhi, he spoke about why the names had gone missing and how his app could bridge the gap.
He said that he first noticed the discrepancy when lakhs of Muslim names were missing from the voter’s list depriving them of their right to vote in the last parliamentary elections held in 2014. He studied the state of Gujarat where lakhs of Muslims were reportedly unable to vote as their name was not on the electoral list. A huge proportion of Muslim voters were missing in 16 Assembly Constituencies of Gujarat where BJP won with a margin of fewer than 3000 Votes.
He acted upon this information and decided to launch the Missing Voter’s app. This free mobile App has the details of all the street names of constituencies, the number of households on each street and the number of voters in each household. The App can be used to identify missing voters, do a household survey and apply for a new voter id online. It is possible to download the Missing Voters App from the Google play store or after giving a missed call on 8099 683 683.
He claims that the process to make a new voter id is simpler than that on the ECI website and he noticed that many politicians were misusing the Form 7 to remove voters from the lists. The Data mined of 800 Assembly Constituencies and has identified 1.6 Crore Missing Voter Households, which is about 40 lakh Muslims so far with the help of the app. They now have more than 9000 volunteers registered on the App and 25,000 new Voter Ids applied through App.
They have even seen success due to the app. In the state elections in Karnataka, data showed that 18 lakh Muslim names were missing. Some 12,000 volunteers registered to enrol more voters. Up to 12 Lakh new voters were enrolled in a fresh drive over three weeks.
Registering so many voters would have a definite impact on the final result. He added that there were three reasons for the present scenario including the political conspiracy related to form 7, the vulnerability and helplessness of Muslims and Dalits and the ignorance on the part of literate people.
He also designed Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP’s) HateHatao App, to fight hate and can be used by anyone with an Android smartphone.
As the Uttarakhand gears up to go to Lok Sabha polls in a single phase on April 11, a survey conducted by Chetna Andolan, spanned across Dharampur, Raipur and Mussoorie in January has revealed that about 12-13 per cent of the total electorate could have been disenfranchised. It also revealed that about 90 per cent names missing from the voter list are of the Dalit and Muslim voters.
(Extracted from sabrangindia.in)
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