Andhra Pradesh Chief Electoral Officer Mukesh Kumar Meena published the draft electoral rolls on October 27.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) prepared these Special Summary Revision of Electoral Rolls with reference to January 1, 2024, as the qualifying date, as per the schedule.
As per the draft rolls, the total electorate was put at 4,02,21,450 — male: 1,98,31,791, female: 2,03,85,851, and third gender: 3,808 — in the State.
Of the total electorate, while the number of General Electors was 4,01,53,292 (male: 1,97,66,013, female: 2,03,83,471, third gender: 3,808), the number of Service Electors was 68,158 (male: 65,778 and female: 2,380 female).
This showed that women voters were higher than their male counterparts in Andhra Pradesh.
Claims and objections on the draft rolls would be received from October 27 to December 9. After disposal of the claims and objections, the final electoral rolls would be published on January 5, 2024.
Special campaign days
Special campaign days would be organised during the period of lodging claims and objections on November 4 and 5, 2023, and December 2 and 3, 2023 (Saturdays & Sundays).
The Booth Level Officer (BLO) and the Booth Level Agent (BLA) deployed by the political parties would be available on these special campaign days at the respective polling stations to go through the voter lists and identify the corrections, and to receive the applications, guide the applicants and clear their doubts.
All the electors, or eligible citizens who would attain the age of 18 as on January 1, 2023, and those who missed to enrol themselves on earlier occasions, could file their applications for enrolment, and objections and corrections, during the campaign days, said Mr. Mukesh Kumar Meena.
While filing the applications, all citizens should provide information accurately in all the columns of the relevant forms (Form-6, Form-7 and Form-8). Applications could also be filed online on the website — voters.eci.gov.in — or through Voter Helpline Mobile App.
The CEO said that copies of the draft electoral rolls would be supplied to the district units of the political parties by the DEOs/EROs, and the same were placed on the website (www.ceoandhra.nic.in) of the CEO.
‘Deletions verified’
To crosscheck the credibility of the exercise done by the district election authorities in the process of deletion of votes from January 2022, a thorough verification was made of all the deletions effected from January 6, 2022 to August 30, 2023 to ascertain whether the procedure was followed by the BLOs/AEROs/EROs to establish the correctness of the process, Mr. Meena said.
During the reverification process, 100% document verification was done by the concerned election officers and field verification was done at all the levels, including the DEO, ERO, Special Officer, AERO, BLO etc.
A total of 21,18,940 deletions made during the period were reverified, and as per the report of the DEOs, the process was adhered to in 99.9% cases. In the remaining 0.07% cases, that is in respect of 1,533 deletions, the Collectors reported that corrective action had been taken, he explained.
Before the house-to-house survey in August 2023, it was observed that certain house numbers had junk characters (such as 0/-/) written as house numbers in the electoral rolls. The total number of electors in such houses was 2,51,767. It was also noticed that 1,57,939 houses had more than 10 electors registered.
A special drive was taken up in August and September 2023 to ascertain the status of such houses. The exercise was completed and the process of correction was initiated in the month of September 2023, he said.
As of now, the number of electors in houses with junk characters as house numbers reduced from 2,51,767 to 66,740, and number of houses with more than 10 electors reduced from 1,57,939 to 71,581.
Due to freezing of the rolls on September 18, 2023, the process with respect to the remaining houses was not completed, he said, and added that it would now be taken up in campaign mode, for which the Joint Collectors were appointed as Special Officers.
