Despite the campaign by the Election Commission of India to achieve a 100% voting, it appears that such a level of turnout is not possible practically as well as theoretically.
The reason is that there are still duplicate entries in electoral rolls and retention of names of deceased persons. To give a few illustrations, the name of an elderly woman who died about two years ago in Sarathy Nagar, Velachery, figures in the roll. Likewise, duplicate entries are there in the constituency too.
Other complaints
This is in addition to other complaints from voters that members of a family, as found in T. Nagar, are split between different polling booths located in different areas and in the name of deletion of duplicate entries, a Velachery voter’s name has been retained at his old address despite being given a new voter card number.
Satyabrata Sahoo, Chief Electoral Officer, explains that prior to the removal of the name of any person, in the event of duplication, a notice would be issued to the person concerned by registered post.
As for the deceased persons, generally no one submits the relevant application under the form number 7.
As regards the issue of splitting of family members between two different polling booths located in different areas, he said that in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of polling booths had increased, keeping the average size at 1,000 instead of 1,500.
Splitting of members
After the end of the pandemic wave, when the original strength was restored, it was possible that certain adjustments had been done to maintain the uniformity of the size of the booths and, in the process, it would have led to the splitting of members of a family between booths.
The Aadhaar-Voter ID linking may have solved many such issues but the progress of the exercise got stalled following the Election Commission’s submission before the Supreme Court in September last year in a case that it was not mandatory to provide Aadhaar numbers for linking with the electoral roll.
Several constraints
Door-to-door verification would also take care of the issues but there are several constraints in carrying out such an exercise in urban centres, Mr. Sahoo pointed out.
As for the turnout, he said that in the previous two Lok Sabha elections, the figure hovered between 72% and 73%. “Let us see how much it is going to be this time,” he added.
So far, in Lok Sabha elections, the highest turnout was registered in 1967, at 76.59%, followed by 73.74% in 2014 and 73.09% in 1984.
