Hyderabad: Former minister and BRS deputy floor leader Talasani Srinivas Yadav on Monday demanded that election commission officials themselves ensure the registration of every eligible graduate as a voter for the upcoming Graduate MLC elections.Leading a BRS delegation, Srinivas Yadav met chief electoral officer Sudharshan Reddy at BRK Bhavan and submitted a memorandum on delays in the graduate voter registration process and the alleged failure of the ECI to discharge its responsibilities. Later, addressing a press conference along with MLCs Dasoju Sravan and Surabhi Vani Devi and MLA Kaleru Venkatesh, he asserted that the voter enrolment drive should be conducted entirely under the Election Commission’s supervision.Talasani criticized the ECI for not appointing Booth Level Officers (BLOs) despite the voter registration deadline ending on November 6. He said the enrolment process should be carried out through coordination between Central and state govt employees, but no concrete steps had been taken in that direction.He further alleged that the ECI had failed to undertake adequate publicity or awareness campaigns regarding voter registration. Questioning the requirement for voters, who participated in previous Graduate MLC elections to register again, he said officials had no satisfactory explanation for the rule.The BRS leader pointed out that while nearly 1.10 lakh voters were registered in Hyderabad during the previous graduate elections, only about 23,000 applications had been received so far. He also noted that although ECI officials claimed to have received 5.27 lakh applications from the erstwhile Hyderabad, Rangareddy and Mahabubnagar districts, verification of those applications had not yet begun.Expressing dissatisfaction with the functioning of the ECI, Talasani alleged that officials were refusing to accept bulk applications collected by BRS workers and insisting that individual applicants submit their forms in person. He also criticized the Commission’s handling of voter deletion issues under the SIR programme.Demanding immediate corrective measures, Talasani urged the ECI to deploy adequate staff and conduct a door-to-door campaign to identify and register all eligible graduates. He said even the CM had acknowledged that the voter registration process was progressing slowly, which reflected shortcomings in the system.ends/
