39% Mumbadevi voters out of draft roll, alleges Congress MLA Amin Patel

MUMBAI: Nearly 40% of Mumbadevi assembly constituency’s voters have been categorised as permanently shifted, dead, untraceable/absent, duplicate and ‘other reasons’ during SIR, local Congress MLA Amin Patel has alleged.Patel said that several voters had been wrongly placed in these categories and wrote to Maharashtra chief electoral officer S Chockalingam, urging him to ensure that no voter was marked in any of the five categories or otherwise excluded due to errors in data entry, processing or verification. He also questioned how information collected during SIR could be excluded from the draft roll and listed several voters “wrongly left out”. “Forms have been accepted from people, yet they have been marked as dead. There are so many such cases. In some places, people have been unable to find BLOs. Even where available, BLOs have no clarity on Form 6’s format following what SC said,” Patel said.Patel has represented Mumbadevi, a mixed-population constituency that includes Dongri, Nagpada and Kamathipura, since 2009. The seat is considered a Congress stronghold.In his letter, Patel said BLOs had visited voters and collected the prescribed forms and details, making it difficult to understand how some of the same voters were subsequently excluded from the draft roll. He urged election authorities not to remove voters without proper verification.Chockalingam said he had not seen Patel’s letter and maintained that such categorisation was not specific to Mumbai or Maharashtra, citing urban mobility as a major factor.“Urban mobility is common across the country, where around 40% of people are not found at their original place during address and related verification process. We put them under five different categories and their names are not there on the draft list. They have the option of filing Form 6 to get themselves included in the list,” he said.Form 6 has recently been at the centre of controversy after a CJI-led SC bench rejected the Election Commission’s claim that the court had upheld the declaration attached to the form, making it clear that it had not approved any modification to it.State electoral officials said they would accept Form 6 applications in accordance with the prescribed procedure and in view of the SC’s observations. Decisions on the applications will be taken in accordance with the final outcome of the court proceedings.In Maharashtra, the enumeration exercise has been completed and electoral officials have verified voter details. Officials said BLOs collected information and signatures from residents, while voters reported dead, shifted elsewhere, absent from their registered addresses or found to have duplicate entries in another area were excluded from the draft roll.Electoral officials said public representatives had also been asked to verify the published draft roll and flag missing or incorrect names.You Can Also Check: Gold Rate in Mumbai | Silver Rate in Mumbai | Bank Holidays in Mumbai | Public Holidays in Mumbai | Mumbai AQI | Weather in Mumbai | Petrol Price in Mumbai | Diesel Price in Mumbai | CNG Price in Mumbai | LPG Price in MumbaiStay updated with the latest Mumbai news. Download the TOI App.