If you have got your name registered as a voter in more than one assembly constituency, you will no longer be able to do so.
An initiative of the poll authorities has led to the identification and deletion of 15,736 Chennai voters whose names figured in electoral rolls of over one assembly constituency in the city.
“Some voters had got their names registered not just in two constituencies but even in three constituencies,” says Sandeep Saxena, Chief Electoral Officer.
The work involves a complex process. Initially, phonetically-similar text data concerning voters are taken into account. They include names of voters and those of fathers or spouses, besides addresses. If all of them match, visuals of voters are scrutinised.
Up to this stage, on an experiment, about 58,000 probable duplicate entries in Chennai were spotted. Subsequently, the conventional system of field verification was carried out. Eventually, 15,736 entries were found to be duplicate. “That’s how we removed them from the rolls,” explains Ajay Yadav, Joint CEO (Information Technology).
Dr. Saxena agrees that such an exercise cannot be restricted to Chennai in view of migration of people across the State. Soon, the exercise will be carried out in other districts also.
On the highlights of the special summary revision of electoral rolls for 2015, the CEO says that as on date, the State has a strength of 5.62 crore voters, a net addition of 13.35 lakh electors since October last year.
While men and women voters match each other in terms of number (2.81 crore), the third gender accounts for 3,446.
As for the enrolment of persons in the age group of 18-19, around 20.9 lakh people are now in the rolls, accounting for 76.4 per cent of the estimated population in that age group.
Of 17.44 lakh applications received for inclusion of names, 66,659 were obtained through online. The poll officials did not have immediate information as to how many online applications were accepted.
Dr. Saxena, however, says the authorities would encourage more and more submission of applications through online and multi-modal platforms would be offered. “We are developing a mobile application too,” he points out.
