As Gujarat completes its Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise, the final electoral roll, to be published on February 17, is expected to see a marginal increase in the number of voters from the draft list published on December 19, which had over 4.34 crore voters, sources told The Indian Express.
The draft electoral roll had 4,34,70,109 voters, a decrease of 73.73 lakh from the last electoral roll, which had 5,08,43,436 voters. Of the over 73.73 lakh names deleted, over 54 per cent are in the ‘permanently migrated’ category.
The CEO’s office received nearly 14 lakh Form 7 applications from across the state, of which barely 1.8 lakh were termed ‘valid’ after scrutiny, sources said.
‘Unmapped’ voters’ hearing
During the exercise, the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) has issued around 90 lakh notices to voters with “logical discrepancies” and those who were “unmapped” and only around 30% of them turned up for the hearing, the sources said.
The hearing for the ‘unmapped’ voters and those with logical discrepancies was held on February 10. “Not even 30 per cent of these 90 lakh people turned up for the last hearing,” a senior government official said.
The Gujarat CEO’s office had to rope in more than three times more election officers to handle the hearing of the 90 lakh who had been issued notices seeking verification from the Election Commission. From 800 Assistant Electoral Registration Officers (AEROs) and Electoral Registration Officers (EROs), the number was increased to 3,000.
Booth Level Officers (BLOs) said those under logical discrepancies include cases of mismatched names, addresses and age.
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“For instance, mismatches were found in names or fathers’ name, surname and addresses in the documents submitted or enumeration forms and 2002 electoral list. For this we have uploaded documents with their fathers’ name included (with the name) in the voters name. There were age mismatch cases too like the listed voter’s age not matching with current age or the age gap between the father and the voter being low,” a BLO told The Indian Express.
Form 7 data
The deadline for citizens to submit their claims and objections to the draft list was fixed at January 18 and later it was extended by the Election Commission to January 30. Objections and claims were disposed of by February 10.
The highest in the 73,73,327 voters deleted in the draft list are those who have permanently migrated (40,25,553) followed by the deceased voters (18,07,278), absent voters (9,69,662), voters registered at two places (3,81,470) and 1,89,364 voters were categorised under ‘others’.
Sources also told The Indian Express that during the SIR, the CEO’s office received nearly 14 lakh Form 7 applications from across the state, of which barely 1.8 lakh were termed ‘valid’ after scrutiny by the electoral registration officers (EROs). Form 7 applications are used to object to the inclusion of names on the electoral roll.
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Maximum such forms, over 40,600, were received in Anand district, while in Dang district, only 55 Form 7 applications were submitted.
Form 7 forms are submitted physically, objecting to the inclusion of names of other persons or seeking deletions due to death or shifting out of voters, among other reasons.
As per the regulations, while there is no limit for an individual to file Form 7 applications, the Booth Level Agents (BLAs) can file up to 10 Form 7 per day within his/her own constituency.
During the verification period, of 14,70,125 ‘valid’ forms received from citizens across the state, 7,25,920 were Form 6 applications for registering new voters, 1,83,235 Form 7 applications and 5,60,970 Form 8 applications seeking correction in the electoral roll.
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For 5.08 crore enumeration forms for the SIR exercise, as many as 33 District Election Officers, 182 Voter Registration Officers, 855 Assistant Voter Registration Officers, 50,963 BLOs and 54,443 BLAs and 30,833 volunteers were roped while in urban areas, officers and employees of the municipalities and municipal corporations have been deployed.
