New electoral rolls for K’taka to be ready by early April: CEC

In growing indications of the Election Commission’s preparedness for holding Assembly elections in Karnataka before the end of President’s rule...

In growing indications of the Election Commission’s preparedness for holding Assembly elections in Karnataka before the end of President’s rule on May 28 — despite the ongoing delimitation process — Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami on Tuesday said all new electoral rolls could be finalised by early April.

After a day-long evaluation of electoral roll revision across Karnataka’s districts, including constituencies set to be redrawn under the delimitation process, and meetings with major political parties, the CEC indicated that by April 15, the EC would be in a position to decide on a date for holding polls in Karnataka.

The CEC, who was accompanied by election commissioners S Y Quraishi and Navin Chawla, said he was “quite satisfied” with the electoral roll revision. While general rolls would be published by March 10, the rolls for municipal constituencies would be published by March 20, and the final rolls for newly-delimited constituencies would be in place by the end of March or the first week of April, Gopalaswami said.

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“Work in nine districts has been completed with regard to the delimited constituencies. We hope that by March 15, all preliminary work will be done and by the end of March or early April electoral rolls for the new constituencies will be ready,” he said. The CEC said the commission would return to New Delhi with feedback and then decide on when elections can be held.

During separate meetings with the EC members, the BJP and the JDS made representations for holding early elections and installation of a popular Government.

The Congress and the BSP, in their representations, said anomalies in the electoral rolls, including over 58 lakh wrongly-represented voters, must be corrected before taking a decision on holding elections. “Can elections be held when there are 58 lakh bogus voters on the rolls? We have provided examples of constituencies where officials have indiscriminately added or deleted voters,” said Karnataka Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge.

Gopalaswami said the issue of wrongly-included voters was addressed by the EC at a meeting with election officials in Karnataka on January 10.

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