According to the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation, the names of nearly 190 Rohingya illegal immigrants residing in Telangana have appeared in the state voters’ lists. The senior officials have said that they have initiated the process of verification and deletion ahead of the assembly elections in Telangana.
“We have received the list from the Election Commission with nearly 190 names of Rohingya living in Telangana to be verified. We have sent the list to Returning Officers (RO) and Assistant ROs to verify,” the officer told the media.
The officer further added that they have so far deleted 25 names of Rohingyas from the voters’ list. He said the process of updating is still going on and the remaining deletion of the names will be done before the second supplement list of voters is published.
According to the reports, the names of Rohingya immigrants had appeared in voters’ list of few constituencies near Hyderabad and the list has been now sent to the respective districts for verification and deletion of names if required.
There are as many as 39.60 lakh voters in Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation limits and nearly 3,600 Rohingya immigrants holding UNHCR cards reside near Hyderabad.
One of the officers said that the names of the illegal voters have been deleted after obtaining Form 7 from them. “They were given a seven-day notice for the removal of the name,” said the officer. Telangana Chief Electoral officer Rajat Kumar has reiterated that they have received specific instructions from the Election Commission to not include identified immigrants in the voters’ list.
We had earlier reported about an incident of three Rohingya Muslims getting arrested in Hyderabad for obtaining Aadhaar cards, passports, PAN cards, drivers’ license, voter ID and opening bank accounts claiming to be Indian nationals. The trio, including a woman, had used fake documents and fraudulent means to obtain Indian documents of identity and nationality.
In order to curb the movement of Rohingya Muslims across the country, the Railway boards after receiving the letter from intelligence agencies have directed RPF units across all the divisions to watch out for any movements of Rohingyas towards the southern states.