EC sets poll ball rolling in Capital

Massive exercise to refresh electoral list from July 1

Starting July 1, the election office in Delhi is launching a massive drive to add new voters ahead of the assembly elections.

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“It will be a three-week special summary revision exercise. We are setting up 1,900 special enrolment camps all over Delhi. Those who have either never enrolled as a voter or their names have somehow got struck off the voters list can get themselves registered,” said Vijay Dev, Delhi’s chief electoral officer.

The final electoral roll will be published on September 2.

Deletion of bogus voters

Dev said 13.58 lakh bogus voters have been deleted from the total list of 1.22 crore. According to officials, many of these voters had either shifted their residence or had died in the past few years but their names still existed in the list.

De-duplication

A de-duplication exercise was also carried out using a special software and 55,51 entries were removed. Dev said a similar exercise is now being carried out in 11 assembly constituencies in the neighbouring Haryana and UP to check if some people had voted in both the states. “Since a lot of people who live in the neighbouring towns have moved there from Delhi, they are likely to have some documentary proof for a Delhi address too. We have identified 34,500 such entries in the electoral rolls of UP and have submitted the list to the election commission. We are carrying out the same exercise in Haryana to check 1.6 lakh probable duplicates,” Dev said.

Action has been initiated against 82 officers for various offences, including accepting a bribe, dereliction in duty, harassment, misbehaviour and refusal to work on election duty.

New voters

Special drives are being conducted to include more youth and women with the help of campus coordinators and special women staff, Dev said. Officials said they have managed to add 2.5 lakh new young voters in the past few months. “The voter gender ratio has increased from 788 to 803 women voters per 1,000 male voters,” Dev said.