Staff Correspondent

Udupi: An elderly couple goes on hunger strike against the election commission for not including their names in the voters’ list for the upcoming parliamentary elections in front of the DC office, Manipal on Friday, April 11.

The couple named Gopalayya Koteyar (67) and his wife Sunanda Koteyar (62) said, “We submitted our names under Form 6 for inclusion in the voters list at the Booth Level Office at Herga Gram Panchayat in Manipal on February. If our application was incomplete an intimation should be given to us prior, instead of being the responsible citizen we are kept away from the election this is not the right thing”. 

“I will take this (ANDOLANA) to central level. We were not informed of submitting deletion certificate from Mumbai while submitting the application. My appeal to the citizen is that, at the age of 18 all should apply for voter id and within a month if you dont get voter id, just deny to pay tax to the government”.

Regarding this Muddu Mohan DC said that, it is the responsibility of the voters to provide a complete application. Mr Koteyar’s application was rejected because it was incomplete. This time we received around 45,000 applications. Giving intimation notice to all the rejected application is practically difficult. However, an enquiry will be made in this issue. A show cause notice is issued against village accountant Vasudev and Udupi Tahsildar Mohan Rao.

DC further added that they can do nothing because after March 26 no applications will be considered. It is too late to do anything in this matter.