Bengaluru is infamous for low voter turnout that invariably plays out during every election. The figure has never crossed 60%. While apathy among urban voters is a very real problem, electoral roll analysts and activists have consistently argued that the low voter turnout is the result of a bloated electoral roll with lakhs of duplicates and wrong entries.
Officials are hoping to change this. In the last eight months — between the final roll for the Assembly elections in May 2018 and the January 2019 final roll for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections — a total of 5.05 lakh entries have been deleted. On the other hand, only 4.04 lakh new voter name have been added.
In terms of absolute numbers, the number of voters has reduced from 91.13 lakh in May 2018 to 88.81 lakh in January 2019.
“This indicates the extent of sanitising we have undertaken to prepare a more realistic electoral roll for the city,” said N. Manjunath Prasad, Commissioner of Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) and the District Electoral Officer (DEO). “Of the 1.37 crore population of the city, the final roll we notified in January 2019 has 88.81 lakh voters. The Elector Population (EP) ratio is 64.36%, which has also come down over successive roll revisions over the years, which indicates cleaning up,” he added.
Though Bengaluru-based electoral roll analyst and activist P.G. Bhat acknowledged this correction as a step in the right direction, he said there is still a long way to go for realistic electoral rolls for the city. “The 2011 census says 41.1% of the population was below the age of 18, which implies 58.9% of the population comprises eligible voters. This translates to 81.27 lakh voters, when every eligible voter is registered. We know that is not the case. However, we have a roll of 88.81 lakh and an EP ratio of 64.36%, indicating that the list continues to be bloated,” he argued.
Mr. Bhat added that while the age demography may have varied in the last eight years, it would not be big. “Weeding out 5.05 lakh names is a big step. But we are still far away,” he said.
Absent, shifted, dead
Mr. Prasad said that Booth Level Officers (BLOs), who are undertaking a door-to-door survey in the runup to the Lok Sabha polls, are marking missing voters as ‘Absent, Shifted, Dead’. While these entries cannot be deleted from the rolls in an election year, it will be the basis for further scrutiny and sanitising post-elections leading to further pruning of the rolls.
Absent, Shifted, Dead (ASD) lists are being compiled, and the number of entries on this list will be available only a week before the Lok Sabha polls, he said. However, those on ASD lists can vote in this election but will be subjected to close scrutiny.
Mr. Prasad said voter apathy is a stark reality and they are working hard to get the voters to booths on polling day.
