All those whose names were removed from the voter lists of Gandhvi and Navadra belong to the minority community.Last year, around 700 Muslim fishermen living in the fishing harbours of Gandhvi and Navadra in Gujarat’s Devbhumi Dwarka saw their homes demolished. They recently discovered that they won’t be able to vote in the ongoing Lok Sabha election as their names have been removed from the latest electoral rolls, as per a report by the Indian Express.
Ayyub Pateliya, a resident of Gandhvi and a fisherman, told IE that about 10 days ago, he visited Gandhvi and inquired about voter slips and whether anyone had collected his. “I found out that our names, including mine and those of my three family members, had been deleted from the voters’ list,” Pateliya, whose wife Sakina was elected to the Gandhvi village panchayat around a decade ago, said.
Gafoor Pateliya, another fisherman, revealed that out of approximately 350 registered voters among the fishermen community in Gandhvi, around 347 names have been removed from the electoral rolls. He stated, “Only three names remain, while the majority have been deleted.” Similarly, in Navadra, out of 225 voters, the names of 224 have been struck off the list.
“After we lost our houses to the demolition drive undertaken by the state government in March last year, fishermen from Gandhvi and Navadra shifted their bases to Rupen harbour near Dwarka town as well as in Madhavpur in Porbandar, Mangrol in Junagadh and Hirakot in Gir Somnath district. However, while the demolition drive was in progress, a senior police officer asked us not to apply for changes in address in our Aadhaar card, voter’s identity cards and PAN cards, saying we might get to stay in Gandhvi and Navadra itself. So, we didn’t apply for any change in these documents but now we are finding our names missing from voter’s lists,” 45-year-old Gafoor, whose extended family’s 10 members were registered as voters in Gandhvi, said.
Both Gafoor and Ayyub relocated to Madhavpur after their homes were demolished in March last year during a mega demolition drive. The government classified their homes and sheds in Gandhvi, a village near the temple of goddess Harsiddhi, as encroachments on government land. Gafoor said that all those whose names were removed from the voter lists of Gandhvi and Navadra belong to the minority community. They had participated in the Gujarat Assembly election in December 2022.
JD Patel, Deputy Election Officer of Devbhumi Dwarka, confirmed the deletion of names. “It was carried out following due process,” Patel said. Individual notices were served to these voters as required by law, he added. Subsequently, a public notice was posted at the respective village panchayat, inviting objections to the removal of names from the electoral rolls. However, no objections were raised.
Based on reports from village sarpanches and talatis (village panchayat clerks) indicating that these individuals no longer resided in Gandhvi and Navadra, the electoral registration officer of Dwarka, who also serves as the sub-divisional magistrate, ordered the deletion of their names from the electoral rolls, Patel clarified and added that the names of individuals found in the villages during the revision of rolls were retained.
The Deputy Election Officer said that these fishermen had the option to register their names at their new place of residence following the demolition.