The government wants to link the Election Photo Identity Card (EPIC) with the Aadhaar card, which has left some city outskirts MLAs worried. Most of the voters in those constituencies have votes in both the city and villages but tend to prefer voting in their native places. Voters in the Medchal, LB Nagar, Serilingampally, Uppal, Quthbullahpur, Kukatpally and other constituencies generally come to the city for their livelihood and go to their native places on different occasions like Sankranti. This is also when many of them cast their votes and meet their families.
This worries the MLAs because they fear that voters will choose their native place over their constituency and this could have a big impact on the election results. For example, many voters in the LB Nagar Constituency are from Nalgonda district and had cast their votes in the last Munugode by-election. If the EPIC is linked with Aadhaar, voters will have to select only one vote and the other vote will be deleted by the deduplication software.
One of the city outskirts MLA said people generally vote for their native place because they have a connection with the public representative in their villages. They also fear losing benefits like Rythu Bandhu and others if they don’t vote in their villages. Another MLA said the problem with city voters is that upper middle class and posh areas do not come out to vote, so if these voters prefer going to their native places, it will have a big impact on election results.
