Reporters Without Orders Ep 354: How NL cracked the voter deletion series

This week, host Shivnarayan Rajpurohit is joined by Sumedha Mittal.

Sumedha’s series for Newslaundry , Broken Ballots , tracked curious deletions and additions of voters to the electoral rolls. Based on data and fieldwork, she found an odd pattern, which she says places a question mark on the Election Commission. She also cautions that this could be “used as exploitation”, regardless of whoever is in power.

Tune in.

. Timecodes

00:00:00 - Introduction

00:02:18 - The Broken Ballots series

00:50:20 - Recommendations

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Produced and edited by Saif Ali Ekram, recorded by Anil Kumar.

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. Sting: [00:00:00] This is a News Laundry Podcast, and you're listening to Reporters Without Orders.

Shivnarayan: Order, order. Welcome to another episode of Reporters Without Orders, where we discuss what made news, what did not, and something that absolutely should not have. The right to vote is a constitutional right under Article 326.

Shivnarayan: After the Lok Sabha election results, there were allegations of voter suppression that some voters were turned away as they could not find their names on the voter list. News Laundry has recently done a series of Stories on water suppression, news, laundry. Looked at deletions and additions in the water rolls.

Shivnarayan: The reporter who has done, who has written, in fact three stories and fourth, is yet to come. Uh, we are recording this episode on 6th of January. The reporter is Suma Mial, who is with us. Suma, welcome to this episode.

Sumedha: Thank you.

Shivnarayan: I want to know from you when you started working on this story, uh, previous, uh, reports without orders.

Shivnarayan: Episode. Episode, you said that. [00:01:00] You had to work for three months in this series, which is called Broken Ballot. And you have covered three Lok Sabha constituencies. Two of them are in UP and one is in Delhi. One is Farrukhabad, second is Meerut and then Chandni Chowk. At two constituencies, Sumedha has looked at how voters were wrongly deleted.

Shivnarayan: And at one constituency, she looked at how some fake voters were added to the voter list. Sumedha, just to kick off the things, I want to know how you started the series and how you stumbled upon, I mean, of course, some opposition leaders were raising these questions, like until then, the The conversation around election system or, uh, discrepancies, it was revolving around EVMs.

Shivnarayan: Right. Now it seems the political parties have moved away from EVM to voter suppression. Right. And as we are approaching, as Delhi elections are also [00:02:00] around the corner, Aam Aadmi Party is also raising these questions. Yeah. So first you tell us how you, uh, how you started this journey and how, how easy or hard it was for, for you to look at deletions and additions and, and the problematic issues that you found when you hit the ground.

Sumedha: Huh. So you rightly said Shiv that now the political parties are more talking about the manipulation of the voter list rather than the EVMs. And there is a Complete like a kind of a 360 degree shift, like until 2024 Lok Sabha elections, they were more talking about the EVMs. And now it's about the voter list.

Sumedha: Uh, first, like, it's easier to talk about the voter lists, about the manipulation of the voter list, because it is something which can be proved. Questions with their political parties.

Sumedha: You cannot approach Supreme Court. Yeah, you cannot, like, you know, you cannot actually convince [00:03:00] people that HA is. But with Waterless, they have been raising questions and after we spend so much time on this series, we found that there are a lot of gaps in the way the waters can be added. And voters can be deleted.

Sumedha: Like, the rules which have been set by the Election Commission of India, they're quite vague. And it's not just one political party which can exploit these, these kind of loopholes. Aaj BJP is in power. Tomorrow there will be another party which will be in power. And they can also exploit these rules. And it's not Something which has happened or the first time.

Sumedha: Something which has happened or the first time. You know like addition or deletion. You know like addition or deletion. There was a time when happened. Like TN Session had said. Before Bihar elections that Until we add photos to voter list. The elections won't be conducted. [00:04:00] So,

Shivnarayan: TN Session, Former Election Commissioner.

Shivnarayan: Former Election Commissioner.

Sumedha: Yeah. There was a big controversy that had happened between Tian session and then the Berlin government, then government during La Lu's time. In Bija. In Bihar. Okay. State government you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. And former chief election commissioner Es has also been saying that this is one of the soft underbellies of election commission, and by that he means that, you know, this is something which the.

Sumedha: Election commission has not been able to, uh, fix it. So now it depends on like how the political parties or which political party can exploit it to what extent. So our stories have like, there can be an exploitation, but the extent is something which we also don't know.

Shivnarayan: Um,

Sumedha: because we have only focused on three Lok Sabhas.

Sumedha: So now coming back to your first question, how we started with this story. It was, uh, I had, I had gone to Karnataka to cover its assembly elections in 2023. And [00:05:00] I remember I was in Raichur, which is one of the most backward districts of the entire country. And it is also a Muslim dominated not Muslim dominated, but it has a considerable Muslim population.

Sumedha: And when I was there on the polling day, I saw a lot of people going back because they found their names were deleted. So this was a story which was always kind of in my heart, you know, from last year, I always wanted to do this, this story. And I will be recently after, Joab and I was in Delhi on the polling day.

Sumedha: I saw that there was this one booth, I think in Malvin Agar, uh, where I saw at least 50 voters were turned away because they found their names were deleted. So then we had a discussion with our editors right after looks about that, you know, we should do something about this, but is, can the [00:06:00] sub challenge key?

Sumedha: How do we crack the story? Because if you assume that. Muslims don't vote for the BJP Muslims,

Sumedha: but then it's like very anecdotal story and it does not prove a point. It does not, you know, like it, it's just like it

Shivnarayan: doesn't cut much ice in. In journalistic terms, like anecdotal evidence, such stories can be easily dismissed by parties, which will see that this story is going against us.

Sumedha: Right. And it's not like, and, and even for people, you know, like, even for our readers.

Sumedha: I mean, they'll be just like, okay, these are just anecdotes. So the big challenge was to first come up, uh, to crack the story was to first come up with the data. And it took us like some two months to, you know, just to find out that how do we [00:07:00] approach this story? Because. Yeah. I had hit multiple roadblocks like ham.

Sumedha: There was a team of interns we saw, you know, from where such complaints about deletion of wrongly deletion of voters are coming up. So, ham, ham, you know, pan media reports. But again, it was just like complaints. Then I thought that maybe a good way could be to get hold of the letters filed by the political parties about the deletion of voters.

Sumedha: For we, it could not, you know. It could not take a shape that way. And then just one random day I was talking to a local Congress booth level agent in Chandni Chowk. And I just randomly asked him that, you know, uh, did you find any wrongly deleted voters in your booth?

Shivnarayan: And

Sumedha: he said, yes, this time around 186 votes were deleted from my booth.

Shivnarayan: On [00:08:00] average, one booth will have 1, 000 voters,

Sumedha: 800 to 1, 000, or it can like in very few cases, it can also go up to 1200. So deletion of 186 votes on his booth was like, they were only like about seven, 800 voters. So it was a deletion of about 24 percent of the votes. And then I asked him that, is it the first time?

Sumedha: And he said, yeah, it's the first time so many votes were deleted. And that booth was also the residence of the Congress, MLA, MP candidate, uh, his name is, uh, Jay Prakash Agarwal. So, this is his booth, where his house is. His neighbor's votes were cut.

Sumedha: And that figure was quite high. And then I asked him, So then he showed me the voter list. Like we were like, it's such a common thing. But sometimes these things don't strike you. At the end of the voter list, there is a [00:09:00] table which says, uh, till last year,

Sumedha: So it has a comprehensive data, each voter list, but it's such a like a common thing, but it does not strike you that, you know, you can do these kinds of stories through voter list and that he was the first one to point it out to me.

Shivnarayan: And

Sumedha: then I asked him, are these voter lists like openly, like, where do I get these voter lists?

Sumedha: Because you get to a booth, which I found out, but. I also want to see what if these kind of deletions have also happened in other areas for genuine reasons. What about that? So

Shivnarayan: just, just for, for our viewers, Chani Chowk, like, uh, Lok Sabha constituency wouldn't. Has some 2, 000 plus booths

Sumedha: around 2, 000,

Shivnarayan: 2, 000, right?

Sumedha: Like so you so

Shivnarayan: that person told you only about one booth

Sumedha: one booth just give a good booth level agent a for Congress And he flagged that to me and [00:10:00] then I was like kitty cat Oh, you know muja bataya key voter list to madam election commission key website peddle. Oh, yeah I was very happy kid. Oh, yeah, but the biggest challenge was that to download each water list You There is a capture code and you have to enter that capture code.

Sumedha: Then it takes like some three to four minutes for one file to get downloaded, file 50, 60, 70 pages, queue the edition deletion card data, and then that's how you, you know, prepare the data of 2000 booth in one loba.

Shivnarayan: That's only one Loba constancy. That's

Sumedha: only one. Loba constancy. Mm-hmm. And then. Then we got like a team of interns to, you know, like newly joined interns.

Sumedha: They were like really hardworking. And like, I'm very thankful to them that, you know, we'll look better. If you don't look, you know, one Lok Sabha would have five to 10 assemblies. So we would distribute one, one assembly each and we'll start downloading the data, we'll manually enter it. And that's how we prepared the [00:11:00] Excel.

Sumedha: And once that. Thing was done. Uh, we had a clear pattern.

Shivnarayan: So now you had the template, like how to go about more, uh, looks back on.

Sumedha: And I think, I mean, I mean, I'm not going towards self praising, but, uh, this was, this is one of the first stories where, you know, which has put numbers to additions and deletions of voters because, uh, After the story was published, I got calls from, you know, uh, top people in Congress as well that how did, where did you get the data from, how did you analyze this data?

Shivnarayan: But did you get any call from BGP?

Sumedha: No. They

Shivnarayan: know where the data is.

Sumedha: Yeah, like, I would like to add to this, like, uh, While, so, you know, like I tried like an easy way out, that we don't have to put a capture and download voter lists, because the election commission sends this data to every political party every year.[00:12:00]

Sumedha: Okay. And much before the election, so that they can raise complaints about it. So I went to, first I went to, I approached Aam Aadmi Party, ki aapko aaya hoga yeh data, so aap please humein de dijiye. So that you know, we don't have to sit, manually sit and download. This is very laborious, ek ek ka capture dalne, ek ek booth ka, and to download it and then extract data and enter into Excel.

Sumedha: I first went to AAP. Uh, They denied it to me. Then I went to Congress and they also said that we don't have this. There were some people who also like, you know, were not convinced that this is a story. They were like, if you look at the overall addition and deletion of voters across the India, they are in the line, which is, it's, it's in the line of increase in population.

Sumedha: So that is, that was their logic.

Shivnarayan: Across India, it will be too big a geography, but If we didn't look about constancy, you would not find that the percentage of addition deletion is huge is alarming.

Sumedha: Exactly. Maybe

Shivnarayan: it's selective. It's some, some booths in one constancy, they would target [00:13:00] and all over

Sumedha: figures.

Sumedha: More

Shivnarayan: or less comply with the ECI guidelines.

Sumedha: Normal increase in population. So that's what they told me, you know, you are looking at the wrong area. So, and I was also disheartened if I'm doing the right story, because yeah, like they make sense, but then, but then I have, because I had found this one booth in Chandni Chowk, which had 186 voters deleted.

Sumedha: Then I was like, no, no, I have to focus on this. And then, uh, then I went to. Uh, BJP. I was like, can you share the voter list with me? Ki dijiye. And to my, not to my surprise, I think BJP was the only party which in their office had their, you know, all the data of all the voter lists properly maintained.

Shivnarayan: Matlab.

Sumedha: Unke paas, there was this one person I came across and he had data of all the, like he had data of, like he had like [00:14:00] properly maintained data from the voter list across India. Can you believe that? And it's not like something wrong. It's the job of the political parties to do this. That's what the election commission says that election commission has given a provision for the political parties to avoid booth level agents.

Sumedha: That's

Shivnarayan: why they've mastered the art of winning elections.

Sumedha: Yeah, I mean, that data is not just important to, you know, manipulate voter lists, but that data is also important to understand, you know, which are your strong areas, which are not your

Shivnarayan: strong areas, so

Sumedha: BJP was really good at it. And then, but then

Shivnarayan: Amit Shah says, like, to win elections, you have to win booths.

Sumedha: You have to win. And we keep on saying that BJP is strong at the booth level. That is how they're strong at the booth level. Because that was the only party I came across, which had such. Properly maintained data. And, but then again, like, but then I could not get data from the BJP for some reasons. And then I went to CPM [00:15:00] and then CPM said, Ki hum logon ko data aaya tha, they were very good.

Sumedha: They were very like, unlike other parties, they were very kind. They were like, hum log, we can share the data with you. But wo jo pichle wala hard disk aaya tha. So like some, like our office was flooded. So we don't have the water list. And then there was this another water set of water lists, but then it was not updated data.

Sumedha: So, yeah, so then we had to like manually do it. And once the entire data was prepared, it, there was a clear story, like in Chandni Chowk, I'll give you a simple example that, you know, there is this, uh, Assembly constituency model town, which is dominated by upper caste Hindus or Punjabis. And there's another constituency, Chandni Chowk Assembly constituency, which has a higher percentage of like about 30 to 40 percent of its voters are Muslims.

Sumedha: So the deletion rate is In Chandni Chowk assembly is around 3. 8 percent and the deletion rate, uh, rate of deletion of voters in [00:16:00] Model Town is about 0. 8%. And this is despite the fact that Model Town has 50, 000 more voters in Chandni Chowk. So it's a big question that why there is a difference in the rate of deletion of voters in Chandni Chowk.

Sumedha: in different assembly constituencies within the same Lok

Shivnarayan: Sabha.

Sumedha: Aisa to nahi hai ki Chandni logon ki death hoi in comparison to Model Town. And election commission says that the usual rate of deletion of voters is 2%. So just Chandni Chowk ka rate of deletion 3. 8 percent is much higher than the election commission says.

Sumedha: Usual rate of 2% deletion,

Shivnarayan: 3.8% of you're talking about cha Chach assembly constancy or chacho? Loba

Sumedha: Chach assembly Within cho. Within

Shivnarayan: lo uhhuh.

Sumedha: Okay.

Shivnarayan: So there the rate of deletion was 3.8%, which is much more than ECI i's tolerance limit of 2%. 2%. There are more checks and balance if it's more than 2% deletion.

Sumedha: Right? Right. So ECSA is key. Rate of addition should be 4 percent and the rate of deletion of votes at a [00:17:00] particular booth and overall constituency should be up to 2 percent because that's the usual rate of increase in your population and decrease in your population. There was nothing after that. Like, once we had the Excel, we had to, our methodology was very clear.

Sumedha: We'll go to those booths, we'll see that where, where, where more votes have been cut, we'll go and visit the houses of those voters whose names were deleted. And then we'll see if the deletions have happened, uh, deletions. And we found, we came up with, uh, There were a lot of cases where those voters were declared dead, but they were actually alive.

Sumedha: Or there were a lot of cases where the voters were declared shifted, but they were actually living there.

Shivnarayan: You personally visited these houses?

Sumedha: Yeah.

Shivnarayan: So, across three constituencies, Lok Sabha constituencies, Farooqabad, Meerut and Chitrakoot. Johnny Jock, you visited some 4,000 houses. Yeah. 4,000 voters.

Sumedha: 4,000 [00:18:00] voters.

Shivnarayan: And, and you also visited 5,000, or you I

Sumedha: analyzed a lot more than 5,000 boots.

Shivnarayan: 5,000 boots. Wow.

Sumedha: Yeah. So it was laborious.

Shivnarayan: Hmm.

Sumedha: But,

Shivnarayan: but who won these three consequences? We were all

Sumedha: won by the BJP. Uh, they won Meritt and Farru with a very thin margin mat. One by just 9, 000, 10, 500 votes, and they won Farrukhabad by just 2, 500 votes, but they won Chandni Chowk by 90, 000 votes.

Sumedha: And across three constituencies, we saw a common pattern. The rate of deletion was higher in those assembly segments, which had higher or the highest rate of voters, which are not likely to vote for the BJP.

Shivnarayan: Voters who are not Traditional, uh, voters

Sumedha: of the bjp. Huh? JP It's not just Muslims. Muslims, we saw like Muslims.

Sumedha: We saw that the voters, uh, and far, but then in Farba we also saw a lot of deletion of Jata voters. Jyoti usually [00:19:00] BSP co voters in Dalits, like Jatavs are co voters of the BSP. Then there were like Yadavs who are co voters of Samajwadi Party. Then there was Shakyas. Shakyas are under Khushwaha community and until 2012, they were aligned with BSP.

Sumedha: Uh, and then for a small period of time, they were a part of BJP. Strong. Uh, they supported Samma Bhi party in 2017, BJ Pik, and they had Keisha pr Moria as their, you know, head who was, was their main politician, Keisha PR Mo. And then Shaka Shaka shifted towards BJP in 2017. But that was for, for a very small period of time, uh, because

Sumedha: those. And Thakurs were, you know, more, given more representation in UP politics, the Shakya voters again shifted back to BSP and Samajwadi Party. So, so it's not just Muslims we saw, [00:20:00] but there were other communities who were also impacted by wrong deletion of voters. And in Meerut, we saw they were bogus voters on the list.

Shivnarayan: Meerut was also one of the hot seats during Lok Sabha elections. Why?

Sumedha: Yeah. Because in Meerut, BJP had fielded Arun Govil and he was like, ke. Who played Lord Ram in Ramayan. Lord Ram in Ramayan. It was like, you know, like those, that one of the seats where, uh, Where it was very important for the BJB to win.

Sumedha: And there are a lot of, uh, talk about it. Hmm.

Sumedha: On the polling day, like its result was announced I think at night and which is not usual. And, and its result was announced after the BJP learned that it has lost aoda. So like AODA Merit was one of the very important seat for the BJP to win. [00:21:00] And this time this was. Like very first elections when Samajwadi party performed really good in Meerut and because they had fielded a Dalit woman, Sunita Verma, who was also first Dalit women mayor in Meerut and under her, uh, like in May, like their vote share had almost doubled.

Sumedha: This was the first time Samadhi perfor parties performed so well. And feeling a Dali candidate from a general seat like a merit ha, helped Samadhi party a lot.

Shivnarayan: So, Chani, you look at the, uh, wrong deletions.

Sumedha: Yeah, ,

Shivnarayan: you also looked at wrong deletions. Huh? So what were the key findings? Um, um, from, uh, from Ban,

Sumedha: as I said, like.

Sumedha: More deletions of voters from Muslim, Jatavs and Shakya communities. So

Shivnarayan: after looking at the, uh, the, the deletions and additions across, I mean, across all the booths [00:22:00] in Farrukhabad. So did you, uh, select few booths that, yeah. That's where the deletion rate is high. So I should look at only these booths and, and see, uh, whether the names were deleted, uh, in right way or they were, they are, they're still living there and still their names were deleted.

Shivnarayan: Right,

Sumedha: right, right. There was another very important startling finding from Farrukhabad. So Farrukhabad is basically divided into five assembly segments. One of them is Aliganj where the deletion rate was the highest. And Aliganj is also Yadav dominated assembly. From a very long time, it was Samajwadi Party's bastion.

Sumedha: And in Aliganj, we saw that there were around 53 booths where the deletion rate was between 5 to 12%. In Aliganj? In Aliganj. There were 53 booths. 53 booths? 53 booths. Like a deletion rate of 12 percent is like massive man, like, and it means a lot [00:23:00] when it's a closely contested seat, like when Farrukhabad's BJP candidate won by just 2600 votes, for one booth to have a deletion rate of 12%, it is massive and so we did a Caste and community analysis of the voters on those 53 booths.

Sumedha: And then I found out, uh, out of those 53 booths, I think, I think 37 were dominated by Yadavs, Shakyas, Muslims and Jata voters. Like not just dominated, in fact, they had voters from just these communities. And I had also done an analysis from past analysis, like who on these booths. You know, uh, these booths, voters on these booth voted for which political parties.

Sumedha: And I found out that in 2022 assembly elections, um, the BJP MLA had one Aliganj assembly with a [00:24:00] very small margin of 3000 votes. But on these 53 booths where the deletion rate was between 5 to 12 percent this time, the BJP MLA was trailing, uh, from the Samajwadi parties candidate by. You know, 3, 000 votes and there were a lot of booths, you know, uh, where the deletion rate was like about 12%.

Sumedha: Uh, Samajwadi Party's votes were three or four times higher than the BJP's votes in the past elections. And the Thing is like, you know, like, Abhi, Abhi aaj kal, I'm seeing a lot of, you know, there was this, uh, India Today's or I think Aaj Tak's Agenda, Agenda Conclave, which was happening. Aur uske andar, there was an anchor who was questioning um, A BJP politician about the deletion of voters and then kuch conversation mein aaya that, you know, how would BJP find out ki yeh hamara, is booth pe hamara voter hai, ya us booth [00:25:00] nahi.

Sumedha: I think one of the anchors asked Akhilesh this question that aap hain, hain? I had the same question ki kaise pata hoga? Ki kis booth se kitne hain? So the thing is you'll have to understand it in terms of the rural India jaha pe What a cleanly segregated in terms of villages. My love, I've got gone. I don't know.

Sumedha: Yeah, I don't want to go. Oh, God, I don't know. You have to talk about what a clear demarcations. What do you have? Or what would you see villages say? What they have? So I put it. They hanky.

Sumedha: So this is one of the ways you can find out, you know, there are like some,

Sumedha: and this data is not like, you know, okay. SA sub chief. CEO website, it's like openly available data. [00:26:00] And the second thing is, which the BLOs of these booths told me is, uh, well, but I think, uh, they are very active. So they are very active in active in the sense of very active in filing regular complaints.

Sumedha: Key up.

Sumedha: That's another thing that's for the election commission to investigate and find out.

Shivnarayan: Yeah, that, that, that's my next question. How political parties are trying or on the lookout to exploit this. As you said, one of the underbellies of election commission of India, because there's a continuation, like there's a continuing updation of electoral rolls where political parties can file objections and they can, they can write application to election commission of India or their state election commission office saying that this, these names should be deleted or these names should be added.

Shivnarayan: [00:27:00] Right. So which political party is in driver's seat to file such submissions to election commissions? Okay. Thanks.

Sumedha: Well, for now, it's not me who's saying this. It's the data which shows that it's the BGP.

Shivnarayan: It's the BGP? It's the

Sumedha: BGP, because you go to the Delhi, uh, CEO website. There's a section there that tells you how many booth level agents of which political parties are there.

Sumedha: And it's not wrong to file complaints. It's the, it's a protocol by the election

Shivnarayan: commission. We are not saying it's illegal to file complaints. You can do as a political party. And if you have objection, you file the objection with the election commission. Election will look at these letters or these objections and they will act accordingly.

Sumedha: Right, right. So it's for. So, uh, you go to the Delhi CEO website, you'll see there, they have given the details of all the booths, which political parties have agents on which booths. And you'll see, there's not a single booth level agent from Congress. There might be some from the Aam Aadmi Party, on 15 20 booths, and Delhi has [00:28:00] like thousands of booths.

Sumedha: And I don't see a lot of booth level agents. And then you go to, not just 15 20, but like maybe hundreds. But BJP, they have like, The highest number of booth level agents in Delhi. Then I went to, I got the same kind of data from Meerut. Meerut, UP CEO, all this is not publicly available on UP's website. I don't know why, but it should be publicly available.

Sumedha: But when I the local election office, so they were like some, Meerut district has some like, I don't know, some 2, 400 booths and BJP has booth level agents on 1, 200 booths, but Samajwadi Party, BSP and Congress on zero. And then in Farrukhabad also, I looked at only Aliganj. Aliganj was the only example where I found that even Samajwadi Party has booth level agents.

Sumedha: And wahan ke mujhe booth level unke jo ekdum adhyaksh elections. They have a little bit of a 2012 collections because in 2022, [00:29:00] he said that, you know, our party had realized that this was one of our weaknesses. He hung low. Maybe like, you have to work on it and then you'll also see that these days in every interview after interview, Akhilesh only talks about that, you know, we have to become strong at the boot level.

Sumedha: So. Cool. I think Samajwadi Party is still working on that aspect, but the other political parties like Aam Aadmi Party, Samaj or BSP or Congress, I didn't find their presence at the booth level. They're way, way behind. And the other thing is when you have booth level agents, you know, like the, so the BLOs told me because only one political party has the booth level agents, then it's also, we get a lot of complaints.

Sumedha: And pressure from only one political party ki hamara vote katiye, hamara vote badhaiye. So, you know, then there are more chances of the voter list to become lopsided. And the other reason is BJP is more disciplined in that sense. Like [00:30:00] even in a non election year, they are in an election mode. You know, it has become this big machinery.

Sumedha: But the other reason is also that, you know, they also have Money and resources and that's where, you know, the elections don't become free and fair and Then, you know, when, you know, like, I spoke to Election Commission of India, he political parties. So then what do you do? Do you see, do you feel that, you know, uh, putting accountability on the political parties to raise questions on the waterless at the right times, the right thing to do?

Sumedha: So then the, the response to me was that a interested, that was their actual on the record code. You know, like if they're not interested and we cannot do anything mm-hmm. But. It's also for them to introspect. You know, like when there are so many loopholes KI agents.

Shivnarayan: Now we have mostly talked about the deletions

Sumedha: [00:31:00] right

Shivnarayan: now, additions and fake voters that you talk about in your merit story.

Shivnarayan: Just tell us a little bit about.

Sumedha: Yeah, so when we had gone to Meerut, we were not expecting to find, come across with, you know, bogus voters. We were, we had gone with the thing that, you know, we'll just see, ki kidar, kidar, idhar, in, in teen boots hain, idhar sabse dada deletion hua hai. Udhar sabse dada deletions toh hua tha, but when we found, when we went there, we found out, jo deletion hua tha, they were good deletions.

Sumedha: They were like, Um, fake voters.

Sumedha: But but but but but but but but but but but but but but water address blank address election commission says it is not necessary to have a permanent address in India but your voter list address should be [00:32:00] should be in respect to an identifiable address for example if your home is somewhere behind the

Shivnarayan: Godown

Sumedha: it should be such that there is a Godown here next to it is your home so that when the voter list is being verified booth level agent can see it

Sumedha: Officer,

Sumedha: so we found there were like about a hundred such voters. Then we also saw there are a lot of voters, so.

Sumedha: 8 years and I've never seen this voter. I mean, it's like, how big is the booth? It's just a neighborhood. He says, we go to that neighborhood so many times, but we never get that voter. So, where, where am I supposed to? Then there was this very odd address, Naya. What is Naya?

Sumedha: Three words [00:33:00] addresses when the election commission says ES

Sumedha: residential proof. So how are these, you know, voters are being added. Then 200 voters were from an RHA colony merit and we found that colony does not exist. . So we colon,

Shivnarayan: so.

Sumedha: I showed this to officer of me district collection officer.

Sumedha: So district

Shivnarayan: collection officer would be the DM of, uh, of merit,

Sumedha: s dm. SDM. Yes, DM or SDM, depends, AERO, whatever, depends from place to place. So I showed it to her and I was like, ma'am, this is your voter list, there is no address for so many voters. So she's like, oh, they have not been deleted this time. She was a very good person.

Sumedha: So she's like, okay, it's not been deleted, I'll look into it, because I was not informed about it after the elections. And I look into it and, [00:34:00] and she said, this is alarming because this will lead to bogus voting. It's alarming.

Shivnarayan: But these bogus voters, did they actually vote in Lok Sabha elections? That is something we cannot find

Sumedha: out.

Sumedha: We cannot find out. But, uh, there is a clear pattern ki in booths pe jidhar zyada bogus voters hai abhi bhi. And bohot sankhya mein, matlab ek booth level officer ne toh bola ki agar theek se deletion hone lagega toh shayad mera toh booth delete ho jayega. But the data shows that the majority of the votes on these two booths have gone to the BGP, like 80 to 90 percent of the votes.

Shivnarayan: Okay.

Sumedha: So that says something.

Shivnarayan: So what is the total number of voters at these two booths where you found bogus voters?

Sumedha: 27% of the bogus were, of the total voters were bogus water. 27%. That's a huge number. At least 27% there can be more.

Shivnarayan: Hmm.

Sumedha: As that said,

Sumedha: so they, we reached much higher. Mm-hmm. There are at least 27% bogus [00:35:00] voters. And we showed at three

Shivnarayan: boots or two boots, two boots, two boots,

Sumedha: two out of three boots, and third boots made. There were like 700 out of 800 voters were deleted, and with 700 we bogus voters There. But up till now there were 700 voters.

Shivnarayan: That's

Sumedha: a deletion rate of 89%. So, yeah.

Shivnarayan: But it seems like at the third booth where you saw 700 names were deleted.

Sumedha: Yeah, there was a third. It was deleted. It was a genuine cleanup exercise, which happened. But there were other booths where this cleanup didn't take place. So I showed these findings to the Nageeb.

Shivnarayan: Just one thing. I mean, uh, those 700 voters, did they vote, uh, during the assembly polls?

Sumedha: Oh, there is a very interesting pattern of these, the voter turnout of these booths is like very interesting. In some elections, it goes very high, like up to 60%, 70%. And in the next election, the voter turnout goes to 1. 6%.

Sumedha: Just [00:36:00] 6 would be like three people turned up to vote. And then in the next election, the voter turnout would go up to 60%. And then there is another election which will come when the voter turnout will drop to 1. 9%. What kind of voting behaviour is this? Depending on

Shivnarayan: the mood, depending on the wave.

Sumedha: So I asked one of the booth level officers, whose booth had such a varying voter turnout.

Sumedha: So he said, sometimes these ghost voters come and vote in some elections. And in some elections they don't. Hmm. So, um, I showed it to. Uh, UP CEO Navdeep

Shivnarayan: Rinwa, and he

Sumedha: accepted to these findings that, you know, ki hain, bina address wale. He said that it's not just a problem confined to Meerut. In fact, it's becoming a big problem across UP.

Sumedha: And we do not have a clear SOP by the Election Commission of India on how to delete these voters.

Shivnarayan: That's huge. If, if Election Commission's saying that we don't have an SOP, how to clean up, [00:37:00]

Sumedha: Yeah, he said that it's a genuine problem, but because once these voters are added, so to delete a voter, you have to, the election commission is supposed to send a notice informing that their vote is going to be deleted.

Sumedha: And the election commission has to give you two weeks of time to Uh, go to visit your local voter center, uh, or your SDM or your election officer and ask him that, you know, like, and, and, uh, raise and raise objection over that deletion. So it gives you two weeks of time. So this, so the UPCO said that, uh, because these are the voters which do not have any addresses.

Sumedha: So we don't know where to send these notices to. So therefore we cannot delete these voters. It's a domino

Shivnarayan: effect. No. So first, nobody knows where they live. Now you want to send notices. You want to follow the rules.

Sumedha: Yeah.

Shivnarayan: Then you don't, you don't know where to, who to send these notices to. Exactly. And the booth level

Sumedha: officers on the ground, they do not know how to verify these [00:38:00] voters.

Sumedha: So once these voters are added, it's a big problem. So on one hand, voters are being deleted wrongly. Notices, we also found that notices, notices. So there was another interesting finding that we saw that. Like how the Election Commission is supposed to send notices, like the Election Commission is supposed to send these notices to the voters whose votes are going to be deleted.

Sumedha: Hundreds of voters whose votes were deleted told us that they have not received these notices. Hundreds of them. And some people who said that they have received the notice, they said, uh, the Bhoot level officers told us that these notices are sent in English. Which makes those voters, like, very tough to understand why this notice has been sent.

Sumedha: Thanks. And it does not help them in any

Shivnarayan: way. I mean, I think everybody knows the election commission, I mean, for least of all election commission of India or the state election commission [00:39:00] that you can't expect voters who are living in rural semi rural set up. Yeah, like it's

Sumedha: basic. You can't expect

Shivnarayan: them to, to be conversant with English.

Sumedha: Haan, aur aap Umke regional language main kyun nahi behj re notice? And UPCO accepted it to us that, you know, these notices are sent in English. And he said that this is across India that these notices But that's,

Shivnarayan: that remains a claim of election commission that notices were sent, but voters that you spoke to.

Shivnarayan: They said they don't receive notices.

Sumedha: Even the booth level officers told me that these notices are not being sent on time. And then she said that a couple of them said that, you know, even if they get notices, they get it in English. So deleted

Shivnarayan: names are completely in dark that the names have been deleted or the new names have been added.

Shivnarayan: They don't know. So they would know only on the day of voting when they go to the polling booth and they find out that. The names are not there in the voter roll.

Sumedha: Right, right. And so election commission counters it by saying that, you know, we run this program, check your role every year. Uh, her [00:40:00] October, November time, November, December, before publishing the final electoral rolls, we do this massive ad campaign, check your role, check your role, check your role.

Sumedha: So if you're not checking your role as a voter, then it's your problem. They actually made this as an argument in, in, uh, in Kerala long, long back. Like there was one voter who had approached Kerala high court saying that his vote was wrongly deleted. And election commission of India replied saying that we had run this campaign, check your role.

Sumedha: And if you're not checked your role, then it's your problem. Then the court said that, you know, you cannot expect people to know that you have run this campaign. And so therefore they should have checked the role

Shivnarayan: of your

Sumedha: campaigns. Your campaigns. So that's the. argument which the Election Commission of India says.

Sumedha: So until now, even I was not aware that there is such campaign.

Shivnarayan: You took three months to, to these, to write these four stories. But, uh, what would you say to our subscribers?

Sumedha: My appeal to people is to subscribe to Newslaundry so that we can, [00:41:00] you know, do more such stories because there's more to be explored.

Sumedha: In this domain on how elections are conducted in India, how free and fair they are like earlier last year, we did a story on political funding as well, which was a big expose. And this was another story which exposed the electoral process, and these stories are very important to do. And they're very hard to crack because they're not right there in front of your eyes and it needs a lot of digging.

Sumedha: So, please subscribe to News Laundry so that, you know, we grew as a team. We can do more such stories. And And these are genuine problems in our electoral system. And, and these stories are not against any political parties, like, because these are genuine problems in an electoral system and they can be exploited by any political party.

Shivnarayan: Yeah. Sumedha said such stories take time and Sumedha could spend, uh, almost three months and she did not work [00:42:00] on any other story. And that was possible because, uh, she knew that, uh, she could take that much of time and because. We, we are backed by subscribers and that's why we. I mean, your money or your support could, could keep us honest.

Sumedha: Yeah.

Shivnarayan: Uh, that was the case with electoral, uh, political funding, political funding story. That was the case with the voter suppression series. Uh, now we have, uh, another NL Sena project, the Hindu Rashtra project, uh, my colleagues Basant, Prateek, and, uh, and Anmol, they will hit the ground and they will look at How villages and government buildings in Gujarat district declared themselves as Hindu Rashtra school in Madhya Pradesh sect, sect, a Muslim teacher.

Shivnarayan: So they will explore this theme of Hindu Rashtra project and please do contribute to this new Newslaundry Sena project. You can go to newslaundry. com and [00:43:00] check this annual Sena project and contribute an amount of your choice.

Sumedha: So talking about the stories, uh, Which takes a lot of time. Shiv, you have also done recently a story on air pollution monitors, which took a lot of time.

Sumedha: What was it about?

Shivnarayan: The recent story that I've done for News Laundry is part of a Fight to Breathe campaign, which was recently launched. The campaign is about, about air pollution in Delhi, and it's a cyclical problem. We have seen media reports. We have seen that this issue is picked up only during winter season when the national capital is shrouded by smoke, when there is a stubble burning fire, uh, and, and, and, uh, and the wind speed is so low.

Shivnarayan: But now a news launcher decided to focus on this issue throughout the year. That's why we've launched this campaign. We want to, uh, read stories or video reports that we have done so far, you can go to newslaundry. [00:44:00] com. And there is this fight to breathe campaign. And on that campaign page, you can see all the reports that we have done so far.

Shivnarayan: The recent report that I've done is about air pollution monitors. There are 48 air pollution monitors across Delhi. And Delhi has the highest number of air pollution monitors, though, geographically, it It's not one of the largest states, but in terms of, but Delhi being the capital, it has the most number of air pollution monitors.

Shivnarayan: So these monitors, they calculate what's your AQI, what's what's AQI of particular region or particular station. So they capture air pollutants. So my job was to, uh, to look at the condition of these air pollution monitors. So I had this hypothesis, somebody told me that these air pollution monitors. are blocked by either buildings or trees.

Shivnarayan: So if, if an air pollution monitor is blocked by trees or building, it [00:45:00] means the airflow is blocked. It means there's an obstruction. It can't capture pollutants as it should. So, uh, I visited 25 of, uh, uh, 48 stations and out of these 48 stations, 38 are real time air poll, uh, air monitoring stations. So in real time, they will tell you your.

Shivnarayan: So I found that around 80 percent of almost all of them, they were called by trees or buildings. The airflow was blocked. My God. So that was my story that why we cannot rely, uh, the AQI data that you see on your monitor, the data that government, uh, government shares with the public, with the media, because most of them were, or all of them were covered by trees.

Shivnarayan: Some were covered with thick grove of trees. It's not just one or two. Three trees here and there, it was like some and four or five of them were located in parks in [00:46:00] those are so called carbon sink areas.

Sumedha: That means that Delhi could be breathing much more toxic air than India.

Shivnarayan: That

Sumedha: is something that is

Shivnarayan: something for the Central Pollution Control Board and Delhi Pollution Control Committee to see the data, like what was the condition, um, like what was the reading of these monitors before any tree came up and what was the reading after the trees or any, um, Obstruction came up near the site.

Sumedha: For

Shivnarayan: a journalist, it's, it's not easy in the sense there are so many factors, uh, because the weather pattern changes, right. And, uh, it could be windy. So there are so many variables that you have to, uh, that come into play. So it can't be like, you can't compare year to year. So that's why we didn't do this part, but we looked at the sighting guidelines, like all of them flouted the sighting guidelines of

Sumedha: CPCB.

Shivnarayan: I'm thankful to [00:47:00] subscribers that I could do it. How much

Sumedha: time did it take you to do this story?

Shivnarayan: So I covered the length and breadth of Delhi, uh, some 600 kilometers I traveled for this story because these monitors were. Um, um, are located all over Delhi, East to West, North to South and travel

Sumedha: far and wide.

Shivnarayan: Yeah. So I, I took, uh, some, it took me some eight to 10 days to cover, only do the legwork for these stations. And then, uh, but the story started when I filed an RTI with Delhi pollution control committee to know the exact locations of these stations, because unless, unless I knew the exact location. I would not be able to locate them.

Shivnarayan: So I asked them, uh, longitude and latitude of these stations. So it started with filing an RTI last month, not last month in November. Now we in January. So once I got the, um, geolocations of, 25 stations of DPCC. So there are three, four bodies which have [00:48:00] installed these stations. So DPCC has installed 25.

Shivnarayan: CPCP has, uh, six real time stations and then the rest of them are by, uh, IMD, Indian Meteorological Department. So that's how I went about it.

Sumedha: See, that's why you should subscribe to News Laundry so that, you know, we can spend a lot of time doing, you know, The stories

Shivnarayan: that matter to you, the stories that are important to you, because

Sumedha: we are already a very small team, like a team of just seven to eight reporters and to, you know, for one reporter to spend so much time doing just one story is quite resource intensive

Shivnarayan: and I don't think so.

Shivnarayan: I don't think so. In, in, in today's mediascape, Any media house would allow any reporter to spend, say, three weeks, even two weeks on one, just one story. Such a space is, is, is shrinking day by day and such space is given only by limited number of media houses, mostly maybe independent media houses or a couple of newspapers.

Shivnarayan: This was, was, is one of [00:49:00] them. Yeah.

Sumedha: Well, we get this kind of a time and investigative

Shivnarayan: journalism,

Sumedha: it's, it's truly a luxury.

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Shivnarayan: Now that brings me to the last leg of this podcast, which is recommendations.

Sumedha: Okay. Yeah. I mean, I'm not like watched or read much because I've been too busy with voter suppression and then after that unwinding, but I've read, um, This one story by Sagar from Caravan, uh, on Aam Aadmi Party, where he had reported on the take of Aam Aadmi Party's volunteers on the party's no stand on politics of social justice.

Sumedha: And I think it's a very important story in run up to elections because this election is going to tell us that. For how long a political party can survive with actually no ideology, ideological [00:51:00] stand. So it's a very important story.

Shivnarayan: Uh, my recommendation is, uh, one book that, uh, I'm reading currently, uh, that book came out last, last year.

Shivnarayan: Uh, it it's by Abhishek Choudhury. Uh, the name of the book is Vajpayee, the Ascent of the Hindu Right, 1924 to 1977. This book is, uh, This is a dispassionate look at Wape biography. Wape is, uh, how Vaj Wape became such a great leader. Uh, his form view is how he was, um, in his school. His father was a school teacher.

Shivnarayan: Hmm. And he also bust a lot of myths about Wape. Hmm. Uh, one of the myths that, uh, WAPE once called in Gandhi, um, Durga. Hmm. So, so many myths he busts and Vajpayee was not good, uh, good in his studies until I think his, um, class 12 and then he, he barely passed his exams. I mean, he [00:52:00] got second division or third division and, uh, it also talks about the, uh, RSS, how RSS was working during, during freedom movement, how RSS was not part of or it kept distance with the Congress or the freedom movement.

Shivnarayan: So very interesting read. I mean, so far so good, but I'm almost halfway through the book, but I haven't read it, but very interesting.

Sting: Nice. Nice.

Shivnarayan: So that's my recommendation. Uh, with this, uh, this podcast is adjourned.

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Sting: Save the [00:53:00] world.

Reporters Without Orders Ep 354: How NL cracked the voter deletion series

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