A serious error has surfaced in the voter list of the Birgaon Municipal Corporation area in Raipur, where former mayor Ambika Yadu has been recorded as male instead of female in the Election Commission's records. The mistake in the record of a former public representative has exposed the working style of booth level officers and the verification staff, and it has raised big questions over the accuracy of the data available on the Commission's portal.
What the portal record shows
On the Voters' Service Portal, Yadu's personal details, including her name and her relative's name, appear in order, but the gender column in her entry reads Male. What makes the error more serious is that it has remained in the records even after the recently completed SIR, the Special Intensive Revision exercise under which voter details were verified through door-to-door visits.
Errors reported in other entries too
The problem is not limited to a single entry. Errors are also being reported in the name and photograph matching of several local leaders and workers of both the Congress and the BJP, which has increased the confusion over the security and accuracy of the Election Commission portal's data. Observers say that if such an administrative lapse can happen with a well-known and recognised public figure, the scale of errors in the entries of ordinary citizens is itself a subject for investigation.
Demand for fresh physical verification
The survival of such a big error after a campaign that claimed door-to-door verification has raised serious questions about the process. People are asking whether the field staff actually verified names and photographs at the ground level as the rules require, and how such heavy errors remained on the portal despite the revision drive. A demand has now risen that the entire voter list should be physically verified afresh.
