2.59 crore voters to decide the fate of parties

The total number of voters during the 2014 elections was 2.89 crore

The fate of the political parties is set to be decided by close to 2.6 crore voters identified as eligible to exercise their franchise in 32,574 polling stations across the State whenever the elections are held.

The State election authority, the office of the Chief Electoral Officer, has released the fresh draft summary revision of electoral rolls in line with the revised schedule announced by the Election Commission of India.

Taking into account the dissolution of the Legislative Assembly by the Telangana Rashtra Samiti government, the EC had set September 10 deadline for the publication of the draft electoral rolls.

According to the revised summary, the State will have more men voters than women going by the composition in the fresh draft. Of the 2,59,16,102 voters in the State, 1,31,33,297 are men and 1,27,80,399 are women while there are 2,406 voters belonging to the third gender. Hyderabad continues to be on the top with 38.45 lakh voters followed by Rangareddy with 26.4 lakh voters and Medchal-Malkajgiri district with 19.8 lakh voters.

Lowest no. of voters

Wanaparthy district with 2.06 lakh voters has the lowest number of voters. Adilabad with 3.4 lakh voters, Kumram Bheem Asifabad - 3.5 lakh voters, Rajanna-Sircilla - 3.63 lakh voters, and Medak with 3.67 lakh voters are among the districts with lower number of voters, according to the new draft of electoral rolls.

The CEO’s office had finalised the figure after receiving 9.45 lakh applications for fresh enrolment. Of these, the applications of 8.08 lakh were found to be genuine after due verification of the claims and the names had been included accordingly. In the verification process, the election authority deleted more than 1.37 lakh names as part of de-duplication and other measures initiated by the commission.

Reasons

The total number of voters in the State during the 2014 elections was 2.89 crore and the number has come down to 2.53 crore in the summary revision conducted during the last four years.

Merger of seven mandals of the erstwhile Khammam district was one reason behind the decline in the number of voters while shifting of employees, who were allotted to Andhra Pradesh, along with their families after bifurcation of the State was said to be another reason behind the decline in the number of voters.

After the publication of the draft rolls, the Chief Electoral Officer office would accept claims and objections till September 25 and they would be disposed of by October 4.

Updating database and printing would take place before October 7 and October 8 had been set as the deadline for the final publication of the electoral rolls.