(Image source from: DNA India)

The assembly elections in Telangana concluded with low voter turnout on Friday, as several voters including badminton player Jwala Gutta, were agitated after their names went missing from the voters' list and the state Chief Electoral Officer, Rajat Kumar, apologized saying they will rectify them.

Among the other prominent names missing from the list were Finance Minister Etela Rajender's father's name, and Director general of police and chairman of Road Safety Authority, T Krishna Prasad.

Addressing the media, the Chief Executive Officer apologized for the incident and said that they will take up a revision exercise to rectify the error.

Issuing an apology to Jwala Gutta, who slammed the Election Commission after her name was missing from the voters' list, Rajat Kumar said, "I personally would like to apologize to Jwala Gutta. It is not correct, not only for her, every citizen they have a right to be enrolled."

He said that they have sought an immediate report from the officials concerned.

"Those who have been denied to vote, I apologize to them. The next time we will take special measures regarding this. We will look at where names were missing.

"We are taking up another revision right now for the January publication. For those names which went missing, we will definitely take up a campaign," he said talking about the rectification ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.

The CEO blamed the voters for not alerting them before the final electoral rolls were published. "We did have a campaign in the entire state. On September 10, we published the electoral rolls where 2.61 crore voters were identified."

He said that the EC had found 3 lakh dead voters and 2 lakh duplicate voters, who were deleted from the rolls.

"From October 5 to November 5, we did a campaign called 'check your name', we didn't get any notice then. We are apologetic that they couldn't use the opportunity, we will see that it is corrected next time."

The CEO as well disclosed the polling percentage recorded in Telangana. As of 5 p.m., it stood at 67 percent, he said, with the highest recorded in Adilabad district at 76.50 percent, and the lowest in Hyderabad at 50.83 percent.

By Sowmya Sangam