Southern States - Tamil Nadu-Chennai

Fluctuations in Saidapet electoral rolls

By Our Staff Reporter

CHENNAI MAY 20. The electoral rolls of Saidapet Assembly constituency have been showing wide fluctuations since 1996. Though there has been an apparent decrease of 30,000 voters in the final rolls when compared to the rolls of last year's Assembly elections, in effect the final rolls recorded an increase of 9,000 voters from the draft rolls published in December last after an intensive enumeration. The final roll published last week has put the total number of voters at 2.49 lakhs, an increase of 3.6 per cent from the draft roll. The constituency had a voter strength of 2.36 lakhs during the 1996 Assembly elections. But after the summary revision in 1999, the number swelled to 3.3 lakhs. Much noise was created over the issue by the parties following which a door-to-door verification was ordered. After the exercise, about 55,000 names were deleted from the rolls as they were found to be ``bogus inclusions''.

During the 2001 Assembly elections, the list indicated a total of 2.79 lakh voters. In course of a special intensive revision of rolls undertaken in November last, another 40,000 names were deleted on the same grounds. The number of total voters came down to 2.39 lakhs in the draft rolls.

In January, the preparation of rolls took centre stage when 21,000 name inclusion forms were received by the Electoral Registration Officer after publication of draft rolls, most of which, the DMK alleged, were bogus, even as a section of the public raised a protest that the enumerators had not visited their localities.

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