Hyderabad: Residents of several villages in Kumaram Bheem Asifabad district on Friday, June 26, rejected enumeration forms being distributed as part of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Telangana, demanding resolution of a long-pending inter-state border dispute before participating in the exercise.
The SIR process has come to a halt in villages along the Telangana-Maharashtra border due to a dispute between residents of Asifabad and Chandrapur district in Maharashtra over which state controls villages in the Kerameri mandal.
Villagers are demanding that the district collectors of both Asifabad and Chandrapur intervene and settle the matter first.
The dispute at the heart of it
While residents of Antaapur and Bholapatar panchayats have accepted the enumeration forms, voters in Parandholi, Mukadanguda, Kota, Lendiguda, Shankarloddi, Parandholi Thanda and Maharajguda have refused to participate.
Booth Level Officers (BLO) and their supervisors have been repeatedly urging residents in these villages to cooperate, but their appeals have gone unheeded.
At the heart of the standoff are 12 unsurveyed villages straddling the Telangana-Maharashtra border whose administrative status has never been formally determined. Residents say they have been voting in both Telangana and Maharashtra for the past 40 years – a situation they describe as untenable.
Former Parandholi sarpanch Kamble Laxman said the villagers have been living in Telangana since 2014 and have availed benefits from the state’s Revenue Department, but are now being pressured to enrol in Maharashtra’s electoral rolls.
“We have been voting in Telangana as well as Maharashtra for 40 years. There are 12 non-surveyed villages on the border and we demand that the Telangana government provide us with patta lands after conducting a fresh land survey. If the issue is resolved, we will cooperate in the SIR process,” he said, urging both state governments to decide on the fate of the villages at the earliest.
SC community’s grievances
The refusal to cooperate is also rooted in deeper grievances. Scheduled Caste communities, which make up around 75 per cent of the population in these villages, say the Forest Department has consistently ignored their demands. Residents also pointed out that they had taken agricultural loans in 2014 but have not received land titles in over 12 years.
Ratore Pushpalatha, sarpanch of Parandholi, said in a video shared online, “The Forest Department has been neglecting our demands of the SC community and hence we decided to reject SIR forms until the two collectors address our issues.”
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