Protest Impact: Several Names Added in Delhi, Sharp Decline in Form 7 Seeking Deletions
Delhi CEO resolves 20 lakh discrepancies as officials step up efforts to include eligible voters
New Delhi: Amid mounting pressure on the Election Commission of India over mass deletions of names under the Special Intensive Revision, the Chief Electoral Officers (CEO)s of the states and union territories that are undergoing SIR are working overtime to ensure fewer names get struck off the electoral rolls. Call it an impact of the protests, there has also been a substantial decline in the number of Form 7 reaching CEOs' tables for deletion of names ever since the agitation by political parties and the Cockroach Janata Party started.
In Delhi, where about 33 lakh entries in the draft voter list were flagged under `logical discrepancy’ or `un-mapped’, the UT CEO said they have started a proactive campaign to resolve these issues. Delhi CEO office said by now, around 20 lakh cases out of 33 lakh have been resolved. If any person has any grievance, please feel free to contact any of the electoral officers. “No eligible voter will be excluded from the voter list,” the Delhi CEO office said.
Interestingly, ever since the stir against Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar has begun, and people have started questioning the mass deletion of names, there has been a steep decline in filing of Form 7, an application for raising objections or seeking deletion of names of voters.
Up to August 30, which is prior to the stir, 51,471 forms for deletion of names were received in Delhi. However, this number declined sharply as the movement against the CEC picked up, and it was just 8,295 between August 31 till October 11. Prior to the stir, in Delhi the highest number of deletions were sought in the South West – 14,659 -- which came down to 1129 after protests began. Similarly, in North Delhi 11,626 Forms 7 were received by August 30, and now this number is just 302. In West Delhi, the application for name deletion dropped from 8922 to 1178, while in East it came down from 2614 to 535. Delhi has also added several new and left out voters.
Political parties claim that Form 7 was heavily misused by the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) to strike off names of people who do not vote for them. Several citizens belonging to the minority community and the backward classes allegedly have been disenfranchised under this process.
In Karnataka, 91,278 Form 7 have been received, however, the break up of its timing is not available. In Maharashtra, such numbers were not easily available.
In Manipur, where assembly polls are due early next year, the CEO office said about 19.60 lakh electors made it to the final SIR list. Here 1.89 lakh names were deleted from the rolls in the exercise, while 56,871 voters were later added. Now a campaign has been launched across Manipur to add more people left behind. Similar campaigns are also going on in all places where SIR is under progress.
The CEO Goa has directed concerned BLOs to conduct house-to-house visits to left-out voters to collect their forms. 81 voters out of 97 who were left out have already filled Form 6 for inclusion, the ECI said.
Punjab, which completed its SIR process on Monday, saw its final voter count at 2.01 crore, which was down 13.60 lakh (6.33 per cent) from pre-SIR figure. Punjab Chief Electoral Officer Anindita Mitra said the draft roll had approximately 1.94 crore people, but later about 8 lakh more people were added. Consequently, the final roll lists 2.01 crore registered electors.
