Name: ABC. Age: 140. Mother described as barely 13 years older. House number: Blank. EPIC number: gibberish. In the run up to any elections, errors in the electoral rolls are as much a certainty as hectic political lobbying for candidacy.
With the corporation elections around the corner, perusal of electoral rolls released on January 5 by the Chief Electoral Officer shows the several errors that have crept into the voter list.
When the BBMP elections are announced, the CEO has to provide the rolls to the State Election Commission.
In an analysis by P.G. Bhat, a retired naval officer who has taken up electoral advocacy, the errors pointed out by a self-developed software — that peruses through the lists of all polling booths — run up to hundreds of thousands. (See graphic).
“There is no accountability in these rolls. The same errors keep repeating indicating callousness. For instance, the software flags nearly 5.8 lakh records as possibly duplicate based on similarities in record. In my experience, at least 50,000 of these will be duplicate,” he said. While EPIC numbers should reflect unique codes for 28 constituencies, Mr. Bhat’s software lists nearly 376 combinations of EPIC numbers. “There is a real chance that many may not be allowed to vote due to these errors,” he said.
Admitting to errors in the rolls — something that was pointed out by their software too — Anil Kumar Jha, CEO, Karnataka, said it was a continuous process to weed out errors in the list.
“Many errors require field enquiries to set right, and there is no manpower to do this. Those who have to verify on the field are anganwadi teachers or BBMP officials. It is an additional responsibility,” he said.
The errors creep in during data entry, assumptions by the software. “Duplications occur when a person shifts address and asks for a new card before the election without deleting the old entry. “While revising the rolls, we have to again verify each duplication. This is time consuming,” he said.
