Sunny Leone, deer and pigeon make it to voters' list in Uttar Pradesh's Ballia; baffled officials call it data entry error

Voter cards in Uttar Pradesh’s Ballia district displayed some strange photographs — of a scantily clad woman resembling Bollywood actor Sunny Leone, an elephant, a pigeon and deer — next to names of the residents in the district.

Two pages of the revised voter’s list, leaked to the media ahead of the Lok Sabha polls in 2019, showed a picture resembling Leone next to a voter named Durgawati Singh.

“While the list carries the picture of a scantily clad woman resembling Leone in place of voter Durgawati Singh of Vivekananda Colony, it carries the photograph of an elephant against the name of former Cabinet minister Narad Rai and picture of a deer in place of Kunwar Ankur Singh,” a senior district official told  The Times of India .

However, other details about the voters, such as age, address etc, were mentioned correctly.

Officials had a tough time explaining the faux pas and said the mistake was made by one of the data entry operators who had been recently transferred from a city to a rural area. “We have filed an FIR against this person and we are modifying these details,” Manoj Kumar Singhal, a senior officer with the Ballia district administration told NDTV .

The Ballia Additional District Magistrate said the name of the data operator was Vishnu Dev Verma. “We found out on 15 August that voter IDs of around seven to eight voters were tampered with and their photos have been replaced with those of birds and animals. It was clear that this has been done by one of our operators,” he told  ANI . 

Another official from the district election office told  The New Indian Express  that the operator had not been provided with a picture and had uploaded temporary pictures, which were to be replaced with actual photos later. “But it went into the final revised list and it was uploaded as it was without being cross-checked,” the official said.

The revised voters’ list was to be uploaded by 15 July. The final voters’ list was to have been published by 15 August, but the deadline has been extended, as per local reports.