Hold ward sabhas to restore missing names of voters in R'than: Civil society groups

Alleging discrepancies in the electoral rolls, civil society organisations on Monday demanded that the Election Commission hold ward sabhas to restore the names of missing legitimate voters.

Social activist Aruna Roy said a similar analysis was conducted in Karnataka, following which more than 15 lakh voters' names were restored and the EC extended the last date of finalising the draft roll to three weeks before the assembly elections.

The EC should immediately hold ward sabhas in the state to ensure that names of all missing voters are restored, Roy said at a press conference in Jaipur.

Gujarat Independent MLA Jignesh Mevani said the EC should have had proactively conducted special drives in other states as well after it conducted the Karnataka exercise.

The Dalit leader claimed that names of roughly 50 lakh legitimate voters were estimated to be missing from the electoral rolls in Rajasthan.

Kavita Srivastava of the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) alleged that shocking evidences had generated in the analysis of electoral rolls of the Hawa Mahal constituency in Jaipur alone.

Nearly 14,356 of the total 41,826 households (34.2 per cent) in the constituency were single-person household, but as per the Census 2011, the state has only 2.77-per-cent single-person households, she said.

Abu Saleh Shariff, social scientist and former member of the Sachar Committee, said his study had found that about 66-lakh voters were missing from electoral rolls in Karnataka of the total 5 crore legitimate voters. After it was highlighted, the EC restored the names of over 15 lakh voters.