In a disheartening revelation, names of as many as 4,23,952 voters had been deleted by the district election department from Pune city area. During and after Thursday’s Lok Sabha polling in the city, thousands of voters came out to protest after their names vanished from voter lists despite their record of regular voting.

Ink and ire: Angry citizens complain that they couldn’t cast the ballot despite having voter IDs. Pic/Mohan Patil

Many Right to Information (RTI) activists claim that most were genuine voters, and are now contemplating legal action against poll officers. The officials, though, said that adequate precautions were before deleting names. Vijay Kumbhar, an RTI activist, claimed that after his demand, state election commission on Saturday published the lists of voters whose names had been deleted in 2013 and 2014. As per this list, 4,23,952 names of Pune Lok Sabha constituency’s total of 18.32 lakh voters, had been deleted.