THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A purification drive carried out by the Election Commission has detected around one lakh duplicate and dead voters in the voters’ list.
While there were about 60,000 dead voters, 40,000 duplicate entries were also found in the voters list that was published in January.
All the one lakh-odd bogus entries are being removed from the list. The purification exercise that began on February 15 ended on Monday, according to sources.
Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi had ordered the purification exercise after political parties alleged large-scale bogus entries in the voters’ list.
The Congress party had alleged that there were over 1.5 lakh bogus entries.
There were even allegations that about 40 lakh bogus votes were cast during the last local body polls.
The purification drive was carried out by a grassroots- level exercise by booth-level officers by looking into specific complaints of political party representatives regarding duplications or presence of dead persons in the list.
Many dead persons were also weeded out with the help of death registers available with the revenue authorities.
A decision on removing a voter from the voters’ list will be taken after considering any appeals, said sources.
As per the voters’ list published by the election commission in January, there were 2,56,27,620 voters. This included 1.33 crore females and 1.23 crore males.
