As many as 20.70 million, or 21.16% of the 97.85 million electors in Maharashtra, including 3.6 million (34.65%) of the 10.39 million in Mumbai, are expected to be deleted from the electoral roll as Booth Level Officers (BLOs) could not trace them during field visits as part of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) that began in the state on June 30.
Thane tops the list of districts with the lowest enumeration rate with 2.86 million, or 38.41%, of its 7.45 million electors likely to be deleted from the draft electoral roll scheduled to be published on August 24.
Maharashtra’s Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) released the enumeration data on Tuesday. Of the 97.85 million electors, 77.15 million, or 78.84%, completed the enumeration process during BLO visits. The remaining 20.70 million electors were found to be untraceable and categorised as absent, shifted, deceased or duplicate.
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The electors will have one month to submit suggestions and objections after the draft electoral roll is published. “Eligible electors whose names are deleted from the roll will have an opportunity to contest the deletion within one month of the draft publication,” said an official in the CEO’s office.
{{/usCountry}}The electors will have one month to submit suggestions and objections after the draft electoral roll is published. “Eligible electors whose names are deleted from the roll will have an opportunity to contest the deletion within one month of the draft publication,” said an official in the CEO’s office.
{{/usCountry}}Enumeration rates were higher in rural areas. Most urbanised districts and cities recorded lower rates, largely because of higher floating population and migration. “Thane was ahead of Mumbai in recording the lowest enumeration rate. First, the floating and migrant population is high in Thane. Since many families travel to Mumbai daily for work and return late, tracing them for enumeration was difficult,” said a second official in the CEO’s office.
In Mumbai, constituencies such as Mankhurd-Shivaji Nagar, Colaba, Malabar Hill and Malad West recorded low enumeration rates. Borivali and Mulund registered some of the highest rates. Buldhana topped the state in enumeration at 90.86%, followed by Ratnagiri (90.10%), Gadchiroli (89.07%) and Beed (89.04%).
On August 5, the Election Commission of India (ECI) granted a second extension for the enumeration process in Maharashtra until August 17, following a request from political parties and civil society groups. The process was originally scheduled to wrap up on July 29.
The first extension was given last month, extending the deadline to August 8. House-to-house verification continued until August 17. Claims and objections can be filed from August 24 to September 23. The final publication of the electoral roll is scheduled for October 27.
In May, the ECI announced the rollout of Phase 3 of SIR in Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Delhi, Odisha, Punjab, Sikkim, Tripura, Telangana, and Uttarakhand.
Once the third phase is completed, the entire country except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh will be covered.
Around 400,000 BLOs were assigned to go house-to-house to 367.3 million electors ahead of the publication of draft electoral rolls from July 5 to October 21.
The first two phases of the SIR covered 13 states and Union Territories, and nearly 590 million electors.
The latest SIR, an electoral roll cleansing drive, started with Bihar in June last year to remove bogus, duplicate, and ineligible voters, including deceased individuals and “illegal immigrants”.
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The SIR sparked criticism from the Opposition, which alleged that the exercise is a strategic voter roll clean-up drive by the poll body to benefit the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The SIR exercise in West Bengal was one of the most contentious electoral revision exercises in recent years. On April 10, ECI announced the deletion of nearly nine million from the electoral roll. Out of these, around 2.7 million deletions fell under the “logical discrepancy” category.
The difference in absolute votes the BJP and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) polled was similar to the total SIR deletions. The TMC has maintained that the deletions helped the BJP win West Bengal elections. The BJP, which swept to power in the state for the first time, winning 207 of 294 seats, rejected this link.