‘Several duplicate voters still on draft rolls’

Despite efforts to remove duplicate voters through the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise, the Congress party claims that several duplicate voters remain on the draft rolls. District Congress Committee (DCC) president Syed Khalid Saifullah pointed out that his office has discovered numerous instances of duplicate voters in the Yakutpura constituency.

He demanded immediate investigation, stating that the purpose of the SIR is to eliminate duplicate voters, yet his team found multiple individuals appearing twice on the lists. The compiled list features side-by-side electoral records with identical or closely matching names, relatives' names, and photographs, while differing in EPIC numbers, polling parts, addresses, ages, or other electoral particulars.

Another challenge faced by party booth level agents is identifying the houses of those listed on the ASDD (Adhoc Special Double Vote Denial) list, as the provided list lacks addresses. This makes it difficult for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) booth level officers (BLAs) to reach out to and verify the status of these individuals.

Saifullah suggested that the booth level officers may not have visited each residence from which enumeration forms were distributed or collected, and hence missed identifying duplicate voters. He emphasized that if every BLO had visited every house, duplicate voters would have been detected. The DCC is urging the Election Commission of India (ECI) to provide the complete anomalies list and the unmapped voter list to political parties, along with sufficient address details in the voter list.

The DCC also called for a thorough verification of apparent duplicate entries detected after the SIR exercise.