SIR: 76,176 voter inclusion applications rejected; final roll additions trail deletions
The Chief Electoral Officer’s (CEO) office has rejected 76,176 Form 6 applications seeking inclusion in the final electoral rolls during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in the State. The applications were rejected on grounds including duplicate submissions, applicants not being available during verification and other reasons, the office said. The figures cover the claims and objections period of the roll revision.
Between June 16, when the electoral rolls were frozen, and September 23, the last date for filing claims and objections, the office received 7,87,534 Form 6 applications. Of these, 7,08,110 were accepted and 76,176 were rejected. The accepted applications will be reflected as net additions when the final electoral rolls are published on October 27.
Form 6 is used by a person seeking inclusion in the electoral roll. The figures show that the additions accepted in this phase are far lower than the more than 80.62 lakh names deleted after being categorised as shifted or absent. These exclusions were made at the draft stage of the roll revision. In all, more than 1.07 crore names were excluded under the Absent, Shifted, Dead, Duplicate and Others (ASDDO) categories.
The status of at least 3,248 Form 6 applications remains unclear. Accepted and rejected applications together account for 7,84,286 forms, leaving a gap of 3,248. The CEO’s office said the gap comprises applications filed for inclusion in the wrong Assembly constituency or with incorrect details around the time the rolls were frozen on June 16. These applications were forwarded to the officials concerned and their status remains pending.
During the same period, the office received 58,475 Form 7 applications seeking deletion of names. Form 7 is used to object to an entry or seek deletion from the roll. Of these, 23,926 were accepted and the corresponding entries will be deleted. The remaining 33,281 applications were rejected.
Officials said the rejected Form 7 applications had been filed around June 16 citing reasons such as electors having shifted or died, and could not be processed. Those names were subsequently categorised under the ASDDO list during the enumeration phase for the same reasons and had already been excluded from the draft roll. The corresponding EPIC IDs had already been deleted, officials said, explaining the rejections. Here too, a gap of 1,268 Form 7 applications remains between the accepted and rejected applications.
The CEO’s office has not yet released official figures on how many names have been declared those of “ineligible voters”. It has also not released figures on how many foreign nationals were identified during the exercise. The identification of foreign nationals was cited as one of the key reasons for conducting the SIR.
Claims and objections are part of the roll revision process, in which residents can seek inclusion, correction or deletion of entries before the final roll is published. The CEO’s office has said the final electoral rolls are scheduled to be published on October 27. The final roll will reflect the accepted additions and deletions.
