Voter list errors: 40 voters in BBMP polls are aged 120 years or more!

Bengaluru, Aug 22: As many as people in the latest voter list in Bengaluru are aged 120 years or more, as per an analysis by a retired naval officer, P G Bhat, who has developed a software to document errors in electoral rolls.

This and other glaring errors abound in the voter list. There are wrong entries, duplication of voter identity cards, wrong gender, interchanged photographs and mismatched data.

But in what could be a potentially huge mistake, the names of 99 per cent of eligible voters who have registered themselves since February 2015 have not been included in the list. Bhat said he had written to the State Election Commission (SEC), the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) and the BBMP commissioner about the matter but to no avail.

“On August 17, over five lakh registration requests were approved and added to the CEO’s voter database but not included in the BBMP electoral rolls. Similarly, about 60,000 requests for deletion were approved and deleted from CEO’s voter database, but continued to appear in the SEC database,” he told Deccan Herald.

Poor co-ordination between various agencies is to blame for these errors which could repel voters, affecting the turnout on the polling day, Bhat said. “(The) staff maintaining the electoral rolls and helping in the conduct of elections are the same for the CEO and the SEC. When new registrations, deletions, or corrections are made to voter lists, they are updated in the CEO’s repository. If the SEC does not synchronise his repository with that of the CEO, data completeness suffers. Voters querying at the SEC website would be confused and frustrated,” he writes on his blog.

While there ought to be a pooling booth for 1,400 voters, at least 25 per cent centres have close to 2,000 voters, he said.

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Elusive bamboo shrimp resurfaces in Mangaluru estuary after 70 years

News Network

December 7,2025

Mangaluru, Dec 7: A rare bamboo shrimp has been rediscovered on mainland India more than 70 years after it was last reported, confirming for the first time the presence of Atyopsis spinipes in the country. The find was made by researchers from the Centre for Climate Change Studies at Sathyabama Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai, during surveys in Karnataka and Odisha.

The team — shrimp expert Dr S Prakash, PhD scholar K Kunjulakshmi, and Mangaluru-based researcher Maclean Antony Santos — combined field surveys, ecological assessments and DNA analysis to identify the elusive species. Their findings, published in Zootaxa, resolve decades of taxonomic confusion stemming from a 1951 report that misidentified the species as Atyopsis moluccensis without strong evidence.

The shrimp has now been confirmed at two locations: the Mulki–Pavanje estuary near Mangaluru and the Kuakhai River in Bhubaneswar. Historical specimens from the Andaman Islands, previously labelled as A. moluccensis, were also found to be misidentified and actually belong to A. spinipes.

The rediscovery began after an aquarium hobbyist in Odisha spotted a shrimp in 2022, prompting systematic surveys across Udupi, Karwar and Mangaluru. Four female specimens were collected in Mulki and one in Odisha, all genetically matching.

Researchers warn the species may exist in very small, vulnerable populations as freshwater habitats face increasing pressure from pollution, sand mining and infrastructure development. All verified specimens have been deposited with the Zoological Survey of India for future reference.

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