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Centenarians on bank’s voter list!

Staff Reporter

—Photo: Lingaraj Panda

A voter list of Berhampur Co-Operative Urban Bank Limited.

BERHAMPUR: If the voter list of the Berhampur Cooperative Urban Bank Limited is to be believed, Berhampur is a city of centenarians!

Elections for the 15 posts of director of the bank are to be held on August 5. Authorities have published the revised list of members of the cooperative bank who are voters.

When the candidates in the fray received the voter list, they were astonished to find that a large number of voters are above 100 years of age. Almost every page of the list of some 12,000 voters has two or three persons whose age is 100 or above. The age ranges from 100 to 150 years. Interestingly, one voter’s age is mentioned as 423 years. He is Nityanananda Sahu of Rankunibandha Street of the city.

Some inquisitive candidates tried to locate them. They either could not find the whereabouts of the centenarians or found them to be long dead. The cooperative bank was established in 1906.

Manoj Patnaik, a candidate, said that authorities seemed to have not embarked on a door-to-door survey to know whether its initial members were alive or dead. No effort was made to enrol legal heirs of the initial members of the cooperative bank.

“A person who had become a shareholder member of the bank at the age of 30 at the time of the bank’s inception will find a mention in the voter list now with his age mentioned as 131 years though he may be long dead,” he said.

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