The ongoing special summary revision of electoral rolls is likely to gather pace only after the completion of elections to the Panchayat Raj bodies.
The State’s Chief Electoral Officer has announced the revised schedule for the summary revision of rolls in 2019.
Accordingly, the draft electoral roll was published on December 26 and electors/political parties were given time till January 25 to file their claims and objections. The process, however, has not gathered pace as a major chunk of official machinery at the district and lower levels has been deployed on election duties.
Senior officials said the election authority would need adequate number of staff for taking up the exercise, but it was facing shortage in view of the ongoing gram panchayat elections. “Staff will be available after January 30 once the election process is completed and efforts will be made to complete the process before February 22 when the final rolls are scheduled to be published,” a senior official said.
Officials are of the view that there will not be any major increase in the number of voters after the revision as the election authority had included more than 25 lakh voters in the revision process that was taken up before the recent Assembly elections. “Enrolment of new voters who attained 18 years is likely to be around five to six lakh as January 1 is the cut off date for inclusion,” a senior official told The Hindu .
The election officials are firm that there would not be many cases relating to “missing votes” as is being alleged by the opposition parties, the Congress in particular. Parties which were alleging that there were deviations in the number of votes polled and the number counted, particularly in constituencies where margins were thin, did not take into consideration the number of votes polled under NOTA (None Of The Above) and the rejected postal ballots.
“There will not be any mismatch if the NOTA and the rejected postal ballots are added to the total votes,” the official explained. The total number of votes polled in Kodad Assembly constituency for instance was 1,93,991 but the total number of valid votes is 1,92,648 and the difference of 1,343 votes was on account of the NOTA and rejected postal ballots. The same was the case with Asifabad where the total number of votes polled was 1,60,862 and total valid votes were only 1,58,075 as NOTA and rejected postal ballots together constituted 2,787 votes.
