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2019 Lok Sabha polls: EC finds 15 lakh duplicate voters in Maharashtra after Congress complaint
However, officials said the deletion of these voters will most likely not happen before the completion of the Lok Sabha polls as it is a lengthy process
After the Maharashtra Congress submitted a list of more than 44 lakh duplicate voters (names that have been repeated twice) on the state’s electoral rolls to the Election Commission of India (ECI) last month, the state EC on Monday said it has found some substance in the allegation.
It has detected at least 15 lakh repeated names.
However, officials said the deletion of these voters will most likely not happen before the completion of the Lok Sabha polls as it is a lengthy process. After the list was submitted last month, the ECI had asked the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Maharashtra to investigate the complaint and submit a report within a stipulated time.
A deputy secretary from ECI also visited Maharashtra to take stock of the progress on the complaint last week.
“We have found more than 15 lakh duplicate voters. The process of deletion of the repeated voters is a lengthy one and needs a few days to be completed. The repeated names are served notices, giving them the choice of keeping one name, thereby allowing them to delete the other one. Our employees (booth-level officers), however, returned empty handed from verification calls as the voters were not traceable in most of the cases. In such cases, the officer needs to do a punchnama of the voter, who is missing from the given address. The deletion of the repeated voters before the election is a difficult task,” said an official from the election office of the Mumbai suburb collector.
According to an official, ECI does not encourage deletion of voters in an election year as it may lead to an additional burden on the machinery and wrong deletion may deprive many eligible ones from the voting.
“The ECI had directed us to clean the electoral rolls ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha election. A huge number of voters were deleted that led to uproar, after which we decided to go soft on deletion,” an official said.
The Chief Electoral Officer has seized the electoral rolls of 8.73 crore voters on January 31, after a summary revision of the rolls.
The CEO office has received 10 lakh more applications for enrolment and it expects more than 6 lakh voters to be added to the rolls.
According to an ECI formula, the number of people above the age of 18 in the state are 8.70 crore (69.5% of the population of 12.5 crore).
This number has been surpassed by the number of registered voters.
According to the official figures, more than 10 lakh voters between the ages of 18 and 19 are outside the rolls. This strengthens the claim of a large number of duplicate voters.
“We had submitted the list of repeated voters only after verification, based on various grounds, and using scientific methodology. We have been told by the Maharashtra CEO that they have found about 18 lakh repeated voters based on our complaint and we have been assured that they will be deleted,” Abhijit Sapkal, state coordinator of Congress’s data analytics.
Sachin Kurve, collector, Mumbai suburbs, said they have found some cases and the report was being submitted to CEO, Maharashtra on Tuesday.
