Missing names, booth change, website crash leaves voters frustrated in Mumbai

Mumbai: Missing names on the electoral rolls, mismatches between polling booth details and those on the ground, and a crashed election website turned polling day into an ordeal for many voters across the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) on Thursday, with several seen trudging from one booth to another in a bid to exercise their franchise.

Even election staff and party functionaries found common ground with disgruntled voters, saying the lists they received had poorly printed photographs, making voter verification difficult.

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There was trouble right from the beginning. When polling opened at 7.30 am, the Maharashtra State Election Commission’s (SEC’s) official voter list website, mahasecvoterlist.in, crashed and remained down for at least six of the 10 polling hours. The outage led to anger and frustration among voters, which poured out on social media.

A post by Nipoon J on X read, “The BLO (booth level officer) couldn’t assist us in finding the name on the list as the server was continuously down. To find names in physical copies was itself a task. There was a lot of helter-skelter in finding the relevant booth.”

Another X user, Pankaj Kushalani, wrote, “mahasecvoterlist.in won’t work. ECI site says “No elections scheduled currently”. Our family of 4 can’t vote simply because we changed our address from a ward that underwent delimitation to another ward. We went from one booth to another for 3 hours and no one gives a damn…”

When contacted, state election commissioner Dinesh Waghmare told HT that the SEC website received 20 million hits, causing technical issues, and that rectification was underway.

Confusion reigned outside polling stations in various areas of Mumbai. The major grouse was that voters couldn’t find their names in the printed electoral list kept outside the booths. Many voters said their polling booths for years had been changed or merged without adequate prior notice.

Saket Ojha, a resident of Andheri Lokhandwala, said that when he reached Gyan Kendra School, where he usually votes, he was directed to a different location. “When my wife and I went to the other location, we were again directed to the original polling station. The booth mentioned in the voter slip was not found.”

The slum belt of Ganpat Patil Nagar at Dahisar was a scene of chaos, with people struggling to find their names on the list. The failure of the websites and apps only added to the confusion. As frustration mounted, many voters gave up and returned home.

Youtuber Iqbal Khan, 28, spent around seven hours shuttling between polling stations in Dahisar. “Voting is very important for me. Our slums have been abysmally bad forever, with people even living without electricity and making do with kerosene lamps,” he said.

After failing to find his name anywhere, Khan met local candidates and asked for their help, and even queued up at local help desks, but with no success. Eventually, he had to return home without voting. “I feel so let down,” he said.

There were similar complaints in other areas of the western suburbs, along with parts of the island city like Colaba, Worli, and Dadar. Bhandup resident Yaseen Shaikh, who has been voting for the last 35 years, did not find his name on the rolls. “I voted in the last election [in 2024], too, and I have a valid voter ID. Yet, my name is missing from the voter list. I asked everywhere, checked with everyone—and now I’m returning home dejected.”

Nahur resident Ajay Rajbhir also failed to find his family’s names on the rolls. “As the election website was down, I went to the voter-help stalls to find that we are not listed in ward 110, where we reside. Instead, our names appear to have been moved to ward 112, the ward adjacent to ours. There, our names were again missing.”

The situation was similar elsewhere in the MMR as well. Chandrakant Pandit, a senior citizen from Dombivli who ensures he never misses any election, didn’t find his name on the list. “I have been voting from the Tilaknagar ward for the last 40 years, but this is the first time that I cannot find my name anywhere. I moved from one polling booth to the other for nearly two hours to check for my name, but it wasn’t there anywhere.”

In Vasai-Virar, even an election candidate wasn’t spared. Dr Neeta Prasad, an independent candidate from ward 22, found her name missing from the voter list despite submitting proof while filing nomination papers about a fortnight ago. Another resident of the area, Sanjay Choudhary, searched for his name in at least seven polling stations, only to return home disappointed.

In Mira-Bhayandar, booth reshuffling left voters stranded. “I went to the usual booth that was listed this time as well, only to be told that my name isn’t there,” said Akhtar Banu, a Mira Road resident. “Political party workers helped me to find out the new location, which was three times as far as the place I usually go to vote.”

In several cases, residents from the same building were assigned different polling stations located far apart. State forest minister Ganesh Naik was one such case in Navi Mumbai. The Airoli MLA, who had to run between polling centres to locate his name, said, “We have three families living in the same building, yet each has been assigned a different voting centre. How does one explain this?” He added that the election machinery appeared to be under pressure and was not functioning smoothly.

In some cases, family members were placed in entirely different wards. In Kopar Khairane’s Sector 8, first-time voter Vinit Ghodekar said neither his name nor that of his sister-in-law Rasika appeared on the rolls despite applications having been submitted. While his mother, Malti, was listed on the voter list for ward 10, his father, Rajendra, and brother, Pankaj, were listed in ward 11, which covers the Kopar Khairane village area.