BMC’s door-to-door survey: 36-per cent of scrutinised entries found to be duplicate

Civic officials said at present the authorities have started scrutinising the intra-ward list where out of the 2.25 lakh total entries, 1.12 lakh or 50% of the entries have been scrutinised.
“Out of the 1.12 lakh entries that we have scrutinised, we have found 41,057 names to be duplicate entries. These names are found within the jurisdiction of only one given ward and there is no overlapping of names. For example, a duplicate name called Pramod Patil could be found within the jurisdiction G/South ward which covers the Worli area only,” a civic official said on Wednesday. Further, the official also said the inter-ward list is yet to be scrutinised by them.

“Usually, the maximum number of duplicate entries could be found within a single ward only. This mainly happens because of first time voters registering their names more than once in the system by mistake or due to network issues. Usually, going by past cases in Maharashtra, nearly 18-20 per cent of the total voter size are found to be duplicate,” the official added. The final list of the voters will be released by December 15 and officials said the list will comprise updated entries from both inter and intra ward lists.

Civic officials said that as part of the door-to-door visit, the authorities are visiting the addresses mentioned in the duplicate list. Upon identifying the original voter, the geo-location of the voter’s current address is being shared with the local ward office which is being recorded in a control chart. Alongside this, the voter is also made to sign an affidavit declaring that he or she will vote only from the present original address.

“This control list will be later issued to all booth level officers during the time of elections to ensure that there is absolute fairness in the electoral process,” the official said.

Further, civic officials also said the election commission has also given the BMC an access to the Electoral Registration Net (ERN) system which is a common database comprising voter’s details alongside their pictures and biometrics–likely to ease the overall methodology of scrutiny.

The civic official also maintained that all the 25 assistant municipal commissioners in BMC have been made nodal officers for these drives. In Mumbai, the total number of voter count or electorate stands at 1.03 crore, which means that nearly 10.64% of the total voters in Mumbai have duplicate enrolment in the voters’ list.