NEW DELHI/ LUCKNOW: About 2.9 crore voters, making up 18.7% of UP’s 15.4 crore-strong electorate at the launch of the state’s SIR exercise on Nov 4 last year, have been struck off the draft rolls published on Tuesday.These voters have time till February 6 to file claims and objections to get their names restored in the final rolls, to be published on March 6. “After the door-to-door enumeration drive across 75 districts and 403 assembly constituencies, 12.5 crore out of 15.4 crore voters were retained,” chief electoral officer Navdeep Rinwa said.Based on the district-wise draft voter lists, the percentage of overall deletions in 22 of UP’s 75 districts exceeded the state average of 18.7%. Rinwa said 1.3 crore, or 8.4% of voters, were found to have permanently shifted from the state. Another 25.5 lakh, constituting over 1.6% of the electorate, were enrolled at two places. A total of 79.5 lakh (5.1%) voters couldn’t be traced while 46.2 lakh (almost 3%) were dead. Over 7.7 lakh (0.5%) voters didn’t return filled-in enumeration forms.
Those Left Out Have Till Feb 6 To File Objection
Lucknow reported the highest percentage of deletions at 30%, followed by Ghaziabad (28.8%), Balrampur (26%) and Kanpur Nagar (25.5%).
In Lucknow, 5.3L of 12L names deleted are of voters who opted to shift to their native places
Lalitpur had the least deletions at 9.9%, with Hamirpur (10.8%) and Mahoba (12.4%) just behind.“Over 1 crore (8%) out of 12.5 crore voters either couldn’t trace their lineage on the rolls or their names weren’t in the 2003 SIR list. Such voters have been put in the ‘unmapped’ category and will be issued notices in the next 31 days. These voters will have to submit one of 12 documents listed in the notice,” Rinwa said.During the enumeration phase, over 15.7 lakh people submitted Form 6, meant for enrolment of new voters. These names, if valid, will be part of the final rolls.
Can File Claims Till Feb 6; Final List To Be Out On March 6
In Lucknow, around 5.3 lakh of the 12 lakh names deleted from the draft rolls were of voters who opted to shift to their native places while 4.2 lakh couldn’t be traced.An official said the high rate of “permanently shifted voters” – at 8.4%, almost double of Bihar’s 4.6% – wasn’t a surprise. He cited a Down to Earth survey in 2021 that pegged the migration rate for UP at around 28.4%, twice as much as Bihar’s 14.2%.The original December 4 deadline for completion of enumeration extended twice – first till December 11 and then December 26 – after it was found that a large number of voters were excluded from the draft rolls.“The publication date of draft rolls was fixed as December 31, but fieldwork and ECI instructions to rationalise polling stations led to a delay,” Rinwa said. Authorities will process claims and objections till February 27.
