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With the civic elections likely to be held early next year, the State Election Commission’s (SEC) data shows there are 4.33 lakh voters who have their names enrolled in the voters’ list more than once.
Further, the data shows each of these voters have their names enrolled in the voters’ list from two times to 103 times, taking the total number of duplicate enrolments to 11,01,505. In Mumbai, the total voters or electorate stand at 1.03 crore, which means nearly 10.64% of the total voters in Mumbai have duplicate enrolment in the voters’ list. This data has been published in the draft voters’ list that was published by the SEC last week.
Civic officials on Tuesday said currently a drive for deletion of duplicate names from the voters’ list is being carried out.
“The figure of duplicate enrolment stand at 11 lakh, which doesn’t mean that one person has made multiple enrolments. It means that multiple entries have been registered several time to an extent that the overall figure of duplicate entries stand at 11 lakh. The BMC has taken suo motu cognisance of this issue and we will be carrying out door-to-door visits to clear out the duplicate names from the list,” said a senior civic official.
Further, the SEC data shows that four out of the five wards that have the highest number of duplicate voters had their last sitting corporator from one of the opposition parties like Shiv Sena (UBT), and Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar). The data also shows that two of these wards fall under the legislative constituency of Worli, which has Aaditya Thackeray as the sitting MLA.
Meanwhile, Opposition parties in the state have pointed out anomalies in the ongoing voters’ list. In a post on social media site X, Aaditya said, “Voter names have been repeated in millions, fraudulent households, no EPIC number cards, voter cards with no photos/ names/ addresses/ EPIC are in a huge number. If the EC doesn’t extend the suggestion/ objections and doesn’t accept our objections after verification, we will clearly know the BJP and EC have fixed this election together. The Election Commission is a circus, no longer the neutral agency that held free and fair elections in India.”
Mumbai’s ward number 199 (Worli) which had former mayor and Sena UBT leader Kishori Pednekar as the last sitting corporator, has the highest number of double voters at 8,207, followed by 7,741 double voters in ward number 131 (Ghatkopar), which had NCP (SP) Rakhee Jadhav as the last sitting corporator. Ward number 203 (Parel-Lalbaug) which had Sindhu Masurkar from Sena UBT as the last sitting corporator has 7,624 registered duplicate voters, and Mumbai’s ward number 205 (Kalachowki), which has 7,585 voters enrolled as duplicate voters, had Sena UBT’s Datta Pongde as the last sitting corporator. Ward number 194 (Century Mill), which has 7,584 duplicate voters enrolled, had Samadhan Sarvankar from Shiv Sena (Shinde) as the last sitting corporator. Samadhan is the son of Sena legislator from Dadar, Sada Sarvankar.
“The SEC has pointed out some factors like printing mistakes, relocation of voters and non-exclusion of deceased candidates to be some of the key factors behind the repetition of these names. To ensure that the number of duplicate entries are removed, our booth level workers will visit the candidates at their given names and fill up fresh forms. Following which a written undertaking will be taken from them to ensure that they vote only in one particular constituency,” the official said.
Civic officials also maintained that all the 25 assistant municipal commissioners in BMC have been made nodal officers for these drives. The officials also maintained that the drive of rectifying names will be carried out between November 27 and December 5, following which the final list of voters will be published by the authorities.
Meanwhile, a senior official from the SEC hinted that owing to the revision of the voters’ list, the civic elections in Mumbai may see a delay.
“The Supreme Court has given us a deadline of January 31 to conclude the civic elections in the state. After the BMC completes its drive of correcting voters’ list, we will get an idea about when to hold the elections. It may either be held by the end of January or we may seek for an extension to hold the elections by the first week of February,” the official said.
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