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Even as the Pimpri-Chinchwad election office extended the last date for receiving objections to the draft voters’ list to December 3, officials said they had received 2,352 objections till Tuesday evening. Of these, around 4,000 relate to the Ravet area, where voters’ names have purportedly been shifted to the neighbouring prabhag of Walhekarwadi.
“Today is the last day of filing the objections by citizens. By Tuesday, we had received 2,352 objections. These are both online and offline objections,” Sachin Pawar, who heads the election department in Pimpri-Chinchwad, told The Indian Express.
Pawar said the deadline for filing objections has been extended from November 27 to December 3. The decision was announced on Tuesday evening. After December 3, officials will take decisions on complaints regarding incorrect names, wrong addresses, names appearing in other areas, and other discrepancies.
The final voters’ list will be published on December 10 as per the new schedule issued by the State Election Commission, officials said. Copies of the list will be displayed at polling centres by December 15.
One of the key complaints concerns nearly 4,000 names from Ravet that have appeared in Walhekarwadi’s voters’ list. Responding to this, Pawar said, “All such complaints have been sent to the officials to verify them and make necessary corrections before the final voters’ list is published.”
Former corporator Seema Sawale has also alleged that 4,500 names from Indrayani Nagar–Balaji Nagar have been deleted.
Officials added that the State Election Commission has flagged 92,000 possible double entries. “We have put 250–300 employees to verify them as to whether these are double entries or some of them indeed have similar names. All these corrections will be carried out and put in the final voters’ list,” Pawar said.
Meanwhile, Municipal Commissioner Shravan Hardikar, who reviewed preparations on Tuesday, directed officials to ensure all necessary corrections related to names, addresses, ages and areas are completed before the list is finalised.
In another development, workers and leaders of the NCP (S-P) on Tuesday burnt copies of the draft voters’ list, protesting against what they called widespread errors and confusion. They demanded that all mistakes, including duplicate entries, be fixed before the final list is released.
The last PCMC elections were held in February 2017, when the BJP unseated the NCP. After the civic body’s term ended in February 2022, the state government appointed an administrator, Shekhar Singh, who was transferred to Nashik last month. The election department has not announced the poll date yet, though officials say the elections are likely in February.
