Nearly 20,000 voters were removed from the draft electoral rolls in Odisha published on Sunday after a month-long intensive Special Review (SIR) process. The Biju Janata Dal (BJD) alleged that the practice excluded far more eligible voters than the Election Commission admits.
The draft electoral rolls, published after a door-to-door verification drive across the state, show that the number of voters in Odisha has fallen from 3.33 lakh (33.3 million) to 3.13 lakh (31.3 million) voters, a decline of 20.14 lakh (2.014 million) voters.
Odisha’s Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) R Sant Gopalan said the deletions were largely due to deaths, migration and duplicate registrations, while the BJP claimed the process neglected “about 27 lakh (2.7 million) voters” and demanded a review of the draft lists.
According to the CEO, 8.32 lakh (0.832 million) names were removed after voters were found dead, while 10.07 lakh (1.007 million) voters either shifted from their registered addresses or were untraceable during the verification process.
Another 1.58 lakh names (0.158 million) were removed after being identified as duplicate entries, while around 14,000 were removed under other categories.
The draft electoral list has 3,13,87,034 voters, including about 1.60 crore (16 million) men and 1.53 crore (15.3 million) women.
CEO Gopalan said the draft electoral roll has been shared with all recognized political parties.
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Voters whose names do not appear in the list can file claims and objections through their booth level officials until August 4. They can also check their registration on the websites of the Chief Executive Officer, Odisha, and the Election Commission of India (ECI).
All claims and objections will be dealt with by September 2, after which the final electoral rolls will be published on September 6, Gopalan said. He added that nearly 1.98 thousand (0.198 million) new voters were registered during the ongoing review process.
BJP Vice President Debi Prasad Mishra claimed that the number of disqualified voters was much higher than the official estimate.
“When the notification for the SIR was issued on May 14, there were 34 million registered voters. However, the CEO has now released a draft list containing only 33 million voters. This means that forms have not been collected from around 6% of voters. The gap is not 20 lakh as claimed, but 27 lakh,” Mishra said.
He claimed that in 75 Assembly constituencies, more than 10,000 voters have been deleted from the rolls, urging the IEC to review the draft list and streamline the process to ensure that no eligible voter is left out.
Mishra further alleged that in some Assembly constituencies, as many as 50,000 voters have been classified under the category of “anomalies”.
“If these anomalies are not properly addressed and the process is not streamlined, a large number of eligible voters will be excluded from the electoral rolls,” he said.
