Mumbai: In a random survey, the Election Commission (EC) has found that about 15 to 25% of electors of the 90.32 million voters in the state could be in the ASD (absent, shifted, dead) category. The chief electoral officer (CEO) will undertake a special drive for their deletion from the electoral roll ahead of the polls.
The EC feels that the inflated rolls owing to the duplicate entries lead to a reduction in the polling percentage. It has been estimated that 2.5 million voters have registered themselves in two different constituencies.
Ahead of the local body polls expected to be conducted later this year and Lok Sabha and Assembly polls to be held next year, the EC has taken up the drive to clean up the roll by deleting ASD (absent, shifted and dead) electors. According to the estimates arrived from the recent estimates by the EC, 10 to 25% of 90.32 million electors are expected to be deleted from the roll. Against the population of 80-plus years, the electors are 165% as against the estimated population of 1.8 million the actual registration is 3,.02 million. For voters in the age group of 40 to 59, it’s 114% and for 60-69 years, 117%, while it’s 108% for the 70-79 age group.
“The registration as voters is more than their population in older age groups, while it is much lower for the first-time voters in the 18-19 group. Only 7.72 lakh voters in this age group have registered themselves as voters against their population of 4.30 million which is just 17.9%. The registration is just 71.67% in the 20-29 age group and 95.26% in the 30-39 age group. This means the electoral roll registration is inflated among the older age groups and it needs to be cleaned up. 9 million to over 20 million voters need to be deleted,” said an official from the office of the CEO.
{{/usCountry}}“The registration as voters is more than their population in older age groups, while it is much lower for the first-time voters in the 18-19 group. Only 7.72 lakh voters in this age group have registered themselves as voters against their population of 4.30 million which is just 17.9%. The registration is just 71.67% in the 20-29 age group and 95.26% in the 30-39 age group. This means the electoral roll registration is inflated among the older age groups and it needs to be cleaned up. 9 million to over 20 million voters need to be deleted,” said an official from the office of the CEO.
{{/usCountry}}CEO Shrikant Deshpande said that according to their assessment of the electors with photo similar entries (voters registered in more than one constituency), and voters over 80 years, around 10 to 25% of electors are still to be deleted from the rolls.
“When we scanned 2.5 million electors with photo similar entries and according to the percentage of older people in the roll, about 10 to 25% of electors are in the ASD (Absent, shifted, dead) category. Their names need to be deleted for which a drive would be undertaken well in advance before the general elections next year. The cleaning of electoral rolls helps us get the actual percentage of the voting,” he said.
Deshpande said that the process of deletion of the ASD voters will be conducted very carefully to ensure that no valid voter is dropped from the roll. “We conduct punchanamas, serve notices, give hearings before the deletions. After the deletion the electoral rolls are published for verification giving voters another opportunity to enrol during over revision in November-January ahead of the elections next year.”
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