News Folio   Amid row over outsiders, J&K adds Over 5 lakh voters to its rolls

SRINAGAR: Around 5.1 lakh new voters have been added to the Jammu and Kashmir electoral rolls as part of the special summary revision with reference to October 1, 2022, as the qualifying date, since the last revision undertaken in 2019 for the erstwhile state of J&K that included Ladakh with around 1.8 lakh voters.

As per the revised rolls for J&K published on Friday - the first after reorganisation of the erstwhile state and delimitation of its parliamentary and assembly constituencies the UT now has 83,59,774 electors. This marks an additional 5.1 lakh voters to the 78,44,887 electors in J&K at the time of 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

However, factoring in Ladakh which became a separate UT in October 2019, the increase may be around 6.9 lakh. Still, this is way less than the anticipated increase in J&K voters post-delimitation; an earlier estimate by then J&K chief electoral officer earlier had predicted an addition of 25 lakh voters (though he later disowned the figure), prompting many parties to allege attempts to crowd the J&K voters list with "outsiders". "The final figures should put to rest these fears," said an EC official.

The publication of updated J&K rolls is set to pave the way for Election Commission to start considering conduct of assembly polls in the Union Territory. All the parties and political representatives in J&K have been seeking early elections, though considering the harsh winter ahead, polls in the UT may not be feasible before March 2023.

For the first time in the history of J&K, more than 11 lakh names were included in a single special summary revision period. A total of 3,01,961 claims of inclusion were from voters aged between 18 and 19 years. A total of 4,12,157 requests for deletion were received out of which 3,58,222 were accepted and 53,935 rejected.

Overall net addition of 7.7 lakh electors in final rolls, i.e. more than 10% of the electors in draft rolls published on September 15, 2022, is the highest till date. Even in an election year, the increase is usually below 2 lakh.

The updated electoral roll for J&K depicts an increase of 27 points in gender ratio that stands at 948 female voters per 1,000 male voters as compared to 921 in draft roll. This is much above the Census gender ratio of 914 for the UT. There are 57,253 marked PwD electors in the final roll. The high increase in enrolment of women and youths is being seen as a result of EC's efforts to make elections more inclusive. Chief election commissioner Rajiv Kumar has been personally pushing for increasing the enrolment of women, youths, persons with disabilities and senior citizens.

There were 75,86,899 total electors in the draft rolls for J&K published earlier this month with 39,48,525 male voters, 113 from the third gender and 36,38,262 females. After disposal of the objections and claims, total voters in the final rolls published on Friday have increased by over 7.7 lakh.

A record 11,40,768 claims were lodged through Form-6 for inclusion of names in the electoral rolls across J&K. Out of these 11,28,672 claims were accepted and only 12,096 claims were rejected.

Elector population ratio in the final J&K roll has increased from 0.52 to 0.58. Also, 99.99% of the entries in the roll are with photographs.

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Courtesy: Times Of India, TNN, Nov 26, 2022 and  November2022,  Koshur Samachar