Barely 24 hours before the Election Commission team visited Dahod for an on-the- spot check, the district election officials burnt the midnight oil on Friday looking for some 300 names, which had mysteriously disappeared from the electoral rolls. Apurva reports from Dahod

Some 300 odd residents of Moti Ghanchiwad in Dahod city recently found that none of their names figured in this year’s electoral list even though they had voted in the 2002 and 2005 state Assembly elections. The district collector has now ordered all election officers, councillors and mamlatdaars in the district to re-check the entire electoral roll, so as to ascertain that there are no more anomalies.

Some three days back, the residents of Moti Ghanchiwad realised something was amiss in this year’s electoral rolls. Khaleel Chital, a local community leader, said, “I saw the electoral roll along with the local councillor, and surprisingly there were no names of people from my mohalla.”

The error, which was noticed only on Friday after the residents took up the issue with the Dahod election authorities, led to Deputy Election Officer V P Patel and Dahod mamlatdaar V K Dama frantically trying to locate the lost names in the electoral rolls. On Friday midnight Patel said, “There seem to be some errors, but we are still going through the list. We have also called the voters here to cross-check for themselves.”

Sources in the district administration said that the errors could have been made during the recent house-to-house survey carried out by primary school teachers employed to cross-check the electoral list.

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