Uttarakhand was one of 16 states part of the concluding phase of the Election Commissionโs reconstruction of voter rolls in India. The draft rolls published on 14 July have 71.33 lakh names, down from the pre-SIR baseline of 79.6 lakh, a net deletion of 8.27 lakh names.
The Kolkata-based Sabar Institute, a public policy research non-profit, has analysed data of 807,410 deleted voters across 70 Assembly segments (not the entire set because official data for 415 of 12,543 โpartsโ or booths was not available at the time of analysis โ Ed). Their conclusion is this: districts with higher Muslim populations have registered greater deletions.
Sabarโs findings reveal that Dehradun (12 per cent Muslim pop.) has the highest number of deletions at 186,008 voters. Udham Singh Nagar is next (22 per cent Muslim pop.) with 177,673 deleted voters. Haridwar has 132,003 deleted names, Nainital 71,810, Chamoli 23,436, Uttarkashi 18,405, Rudraprayag 10,809, Tehri Garhwal 43,636, Pauri Garhwal 51,359, Pithoragarh 27,436, Bageshwar 13,010. The population of Muslims in these districts ranges from 8 to 12 per cent.
Opposition leaders say the ECI is accepting unverified bulk submissions of Form 7 (used to either object to someoneโs inclusion in the roll or request deletion of a name already listed). On 20 August, the Congress submitted a memorandum to the ECI in Delhi, alleging that thousands of Form 7 applications generated centrally, without any ground-level checks, were submitted by a pool of 262 individuals without verifiable identities.
Congress leader Qazi Muhammed Nizamuddin, who represents the Manglaur Assembly segment, was part of this delegation. While a separate delegation met the stateโs chief electoral officer B.V.R.C. Purushottam in Dehradun to express these concerns, Nizamuddin said all district magistrates โ including the DM of Haridwar โ have been informed. According to Purushottam, 24.3 lakh notices have been issued so far under the SIR, of which around 20.27 lakh have already been delivered to voters.
About the Author
