Election Commission apology for missing voters' names in Maharashtra

"We will look into the matter and we apologise for the inconvenience caused to voters," Election Commissioner HS Brahma said today. He is one of three election commissioners.

Hundreds of thousands of names were found missing from the voters' lists on Thursday, when the 19 constituencies in the state voted in the sixth phase of the national election.

In Mumbai, around two lakh voters could not find their name on the list. Mumbai has six Lok Sabha seats.

Among those who said they could note vote because their names were missing were HDFC chairman Deepak Parekh, lawyer Ram Jethmalani and Marathi  actor Atul Kulkarni.

Mumbai recorded a 53% voter turnout on Thursday, a sharp rise from the 2009 elections, but far less than many other parts of the country.

Sources in the Election Commission say these voters can't cast their vote in this election, but the error will be corrected before the Maharashtra assembly election due later this year.

Ananya Sharma tweeted a letter she says she received from the Election Commission. It said, "We could not provide any reason for the rejection of your form. Due to the closing of the voting list, we cannot add your name to the voter list and therefore you cannot vote in the Lok Sabha elections." NDTV cannot verify the authenticity of the letter.

Voters' names were reportedly left out in "a clean-up" drive to remove voters who have not voted in the last few elections, have moved out or have died. A group of citizens in Mumbai has threatened to go to court over the missing names.

But the election commissioner also said that voters were partly responsible too as they could have pointed out that their names were missing on March 9, when the final voters' lists were verified.

Maharashtra sends 48 MPs to the Lok Sabha, the second largest contingent after Uttar Pradesh.