New draft rolls has 2,03,055 less voters

Election officials had launched a major ‘clean-up’ of the electoral rolls following a controversy over duplication of voter names in the list ahead of the 2021 Assembly elections in the State.

At the time, the Opposition Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) had alleged that this could lead to bogus voting. Though bogus voting did not really cast a shadow over the elections, the controversy prompted election officials to step up the ‘purification’ of the rolls.

The draft rolls for Kerala with January 1, 2023 as the qualifying date published on Wednesday has 2,03,055 less voters than the final list for 2022 published in January this year. This is due to the removal of the names of absent, shifted and dead voters, according to the office of Chief Electoral Officer Sanjay Kaul.

The number of female voters have gone down by 1,09,546, male voters by 93,498 and transgender voters by 11, according to the latest data. At the same time, a little over 1.10 lakh new voters have been added to the list.