The total number of voters in Delhi has shrunk by over one lakh since the city last went to polls in February this year.
The number of eligible voters during the Delhi Assembly elections held in February was more than 1.33 lakh, but the number of voters after the summary revision of the electoral rolls has come down to about 1.32 lakh. The electoral office ascribes this steep drop to the stringent purification of electoral rolls.
During the summary revision, which is an annual ritual, the electoral office added 2.62 lakh voters to the rolls. But surprisingly, the number of voters pruned out of the list was 3.65 lakh. This led the total number of voters to come down by 1,07,475 voters after the February polls.
“This is a result of the clean up in the electoral rolls that was initiated from March 3,” said Chandra Bhushan Kumar, Chief Electoral Officer of Delhi. “This was conducted according to the NERPAP (National Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication Programme),” Mr. Kumar said.
He added that the names that were deleted include those who have shifted homes, died or moved away from Delhi. “We have been extra cautious because the exercise includes deleting names from electoral rolls and you cannot deny anyone the right to vote,” he said.
Mr. Kumar also said that since there were no elections scheduled when the drive was undertaken, the staff could devote all their time to the exercise.
“We have followed the prescribed process and that does take a lot of time. Notices were issued to everyone whose names were being deleted and they had sufficient time to respond,” he said. “We got a lot of cooperation from the citizens too for the drive. The drive was carried out across the city and people properly filled up forms to submit them,” the officer said.
Mr. Kumar added that different strategies were adopted to carry out the process. “We got death certificates issued by the municipal corporations to cross-check,” he said.
The number of eligible voters in the national Capital has come by down more than 1 lakh
