Software errors affected 158 entries in UP MLC voter rolls

Errors in Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council voter rolls affected 158 of 1,481,310 entries across 11 constituencies, Chief Electoral Officer Navdeep Rinwa said, as polling took place on October 23. Some names were rendered as literal translations by software intended to convert English spellings into Hindi phonetically, while another entry appeared to reflect human error or negligence, he said. One example began with the name Ramhit Yadav, which was entered as “Ram hit Yadav.” The software translated the words into a Hindi phrase meaning “Ram hit Yadav” rather than reproducing the name. Other unusual entries included “Ram ne Sharma ko maara” and “B.Com” in a voter’s father’s-name field. Rinwa said the online system was introduced for preparing the graduate and teachers constituency rolls, replacing the previous manual process. It was designed to transliterate names, but in some cases translated words instead. An editing facility was available to correct errors, though some entries remained unchanged in the final rolls, he said. The discrepancies were reported in rolls for the Legislative Council elections covering five graduate and six teachers constituencies. Rinwa said the...