MUMBAI: The Congress is questioning an alleged discrepancy of 790,364 voters in figures released by the state chief electoral officer (CEO) during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Maharashtra. The political party claims the voters were deleted from the rolls between May and August this year.
Maharashtra Congress general secretary Sandesh Kondvilkar, in a letter to the CEO, said that figures shared with political parties on May 26, revealed that Maharashtra had 98,644,413 voters, whereas the CEO’s August 31 media release said the state had 97,854,049 voters before the SIR started on June 30. The difference is 790,364 electors. This means 790,364 voters were deleted from the rolls during this period. During the SIR, the Election Commission removed 20.7 million electors in the ASDDO category and identified another 12.2 million voters with anomalies in their details or whose records could not be mapped with their 2004 SIR records.
He confirmed that these deletions were not part of the ASDDO list. There was no special summary revision drive during this period. How were so many voters deleted in such a short span,” he asked. Kondvilkar questioned whether these voters figured in the ASDDO (Absent, Shifted, Dead, Duplicate, Other) lists or the draft electoral roll. He demanded a high-level inquiry into the discrepancy and sought clarification from the election authorities.
