5.41 lakh voters deleted from electoral roll of Hyderabad since 2023

An election official puts ink mark on a finger of a voter. Representational image. | Photo Credit: The Hindu

In an exercise to sanitise the electoral rolls, the Hyderabad district’s election authorities have effected a large number of deletions from the lists.

Since the Assembly elections last year, more than 1.67 lakh voters have been deleted from the rolls, as per information obtained from the civic body.

Currently, the number of valid voters in all the 15 constituencies of Hyderabad district stands at over 45.7 lakh, which is over 33,000 higher than the number of voters in November last year, when the elections were held. The elector-population ratio for Parliamentary elections was pegged at 75.3%, which is still much higher than the average elector-population ratio for the country, recorded at 68%.

The number would have been even higher if not for the deletions this time. As per information available, the number of electors marked as Absent, Shifted and Dead (ASD) at the time of Assembly elections was 1,09,117. The ASD list is usually prepared with information received after preparation of the final electoral rolls, hence not incorporated therein. The information was verified during the Special Summary Revision of Electoral Rolls in January this year, and deletions were effected accordingly.

Highest in Nampally

The highest number of deletions were in Nampally Assembly constituency at 21,407, of which 15,963 were marked as shifted voters, 2,843 as dead and 2,601 as duplicate voters. This is way less than the actual number of voters in the ASD list, at a whopping 62,000, largely at the behest of the Congress contestant, Mohammed Feroz Khan.

In all other constituencies, the actual deletions were way higher than those mentioned in the ASD list. Jubilee Hills followed Nampally with 21,222 deletions, of which 16,658 were shifted voters, 3,754 duplicate voters and 810 were deceased voters.

Karwan had 20,722 deleted voters, of whom 12,527 shifted homes, 4,827 were duplicate, and 3,368 were deceased.

Chandrayangutta, Yakutpura and Bahadurpura were other Assembly constituencies where the deletions were high.

The election authorities informed that since January 2023, a total 5,41,259 names were removed from electoral rolls, of which 47,141 were deceased, 4,39,801 shifted homes, and 54,259 were duplicate voters. All the deletions were done as per procedure duly collecting Form-7 and Form-8 as per the standard operating procedure prescribed by the Election Commission of India, they said.

Further, during the purification of electoral rolls, it has been observed that many voters had a non-standard house number on the rolls, and hence a drive was taken up to identify such voters and do the corrections. Accordingly, a total of 1,81,405 voters with non-standard house numbers were identified and corrections have been made to their house numbers, the authorities informed.

Measures were also taken to bring voters belonging to a family to a single polling station. In Hyderabad, a total 3,78,713 corrections were made in this regard.