70% of ‘duplicate’ voters in local body polls identified in Mumbai, SEC praises BMC’s good work

The high number of identified ‘duplicate’ voters in Mumbai is attributed not only to the substantial floating population but also to other factors, including additional efforts put in by the BMC, the wide spectrum of machinery available to it and the greater number of wards

MUMBAI: Of the 1.5 million ‘dubaar’ or suspected ‘duplicate’ voters across the 29 municipal corporations that will go to the polls on January 15, over 1.10 million have been identified in Mumbai while the remaining 0.4 million are in the other 28 corporations. The data has raised eyebrows and also highlights that the de-duplication work in the 28 corporations was not done as effectively as it was by the BMC.

Access to the assembly as well as corporation electoral data, and manpower from both the collectorate and the corporation made job of door-to-door verification of voters in Mumbai easier, officials said (Hindustan Times)

The high number of identified ‘duplicate’ voters in Mumbai is attributed not only to the substantial floating population but also to other factors, including additional efforts put in by the BMC, the wide spectrum of machinery available to it and the greater number of wards. Simply put, the greater the number of wards and voters, the greater the chances of duplication.

According to officials from the urban development department, though the number of voters for the BMC polls are over 29% of the total voters (10.3 crore of 34.8 million) in the 29 municipal corporations, the number of ‘duplicate’ voters in Mumbai is over 70% of the total 1.5 million such voters in all 29 bodies. “This clearly indicates that the other 28 bodies have under-declared the suspected ‘duplicate’ voters,” said an officer. “The BMC implemented the de-duplication exercise across the city. It developed its own app to identify the ‘duplicate’ voters by using photographs. After identifying them, the huge manpower at its disposal was utilised to contact the voters and ask them to choose one polling station.”

Unlike other municipal corporations, BMC commissioner Bhushan Gagrani was also the district election officer, in charge of the assembly polls last year. He is in charge of the BMC elections as well, which gives him access to both the assembly electoral data as well as that of the corporation, and manpower from both the collectorate and the corporation. “This makes the job of door-to-door verification of voters and obtaining an undertaking from them much easier,” said another Mantralaya officer. “In other corporations, the municipal commissioners did not have this access nor did they try to establish coordination with the collectors who were in charge of the assembly polls.”

Arun Kshirsagar, Director (Information Technology), BMC, said, “We split the voters’ roll into two parts—first, the duplicate entries within the same ward, and secondly, duplicate entries across wards. We began de-duplication with the first category, and in some wards the process has been completed. For the second category, a software tool was developed to identify duplicate entries by verifying similar photographs. This helped significantly in flagging them.”

As a result of this, the BMC has reached out to over 60% of the 1.10 million ‘duplicate’ voters to obtain undertakings from them regarding the choice of polling station. Other corporations have been lagging behind in such a reach-out.

The efforts by the BMC were appreciated by the Election Commission of India in a joint meeting recently. “The BMC has conducted the de-duplicating exercise very effectively by developing its own tool,” said state election commissioner Dinesh Waghmare. “We have asked other corporations to use the app developed by it for the de-duplication exercise—it will help them identify more ‘duplicate’ voters effectively.”