Hyderabad, June 25 (Maxim News): AIMIM president and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi on Thursday raised objections to the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in Telangana and also questioned the Centre’s clarification that a passport is only a travel document and not proof of citizenship.
Addressing a press conference in Hyderabad, Owaisi said the Election Commission had listed 12 documents for voters whose names were missing from the 2002 draft electoral roll. However, he said several of those documents were either invalid or unavailable in Telangana, leaving many voters with fewer options to prove eligibility.
He said Telangana never conducted the NRC, does not issue Permanent Resident Certificates and does not maintain a Family Register. He also pointed out that Aadhaar is not being accepted for the exercise, effectively reducing the usable list of documents for voters in the State.
Owaisi seeks more voter documents, questions passport stand
Owaisi said AIMIM had asked the Election Commission to include PAN cards, State-issued driving licences and food security cards as valid documents, but the request was rejected. He also questioned the treatment of so-called anomalies in voter records and said minor spelling errors in old electoral rolls should not be used against voters now.
He said the 2002 voter list was prepared manually and clerical mistakes from that period cannot become grounds to trouble genuine voters. Owaisi also raised concerns over the timeline of the SIR exercise, saying one Booth Level Officer is handling around 1,200 voters in a booth and has only 30 days to distribute and collect forms during the monsoon season.
The AIMIM chief also reacted to the Ministry of External Affairs’ clarification that a passport is only a travel document and not proof of citizenship. He questioned the logic behind the statement and said a passport is issued only to an Indian citizen.
Referring to Section 6(2)(a) of the Passport Act, Owaisi said a person who is not a citizen of India cannot be issued a passport. He argued that the government’s clarification had created confusion and needed a clearer explanation in the context of citizenship verification and documentation. (Maxim News)
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