The Election Commission of India on Friday completed the exercise of revising the existing electoral rolls by incorporating youngsters who have attained the age of 18 years on October 1 or earlier in the new voter lists.
The final electoral rolls have a total of 83,59,771 electors, out of which 42,91,687 are male, 184 are the third gender and 40,67,900 are females. The elector population ratio has increased from 0.52 to 0.58 during this Special Summary Review (SSR). The gender ratio of the final electoral roll has increased from 921 to 948.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) had already set a new deadline of November 25 for the final date for publication of electoral rolls in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
To provide an opportunity to youngsters attaining the age of 18 years on October 1 or earlier the deadline was extended from October 31 to November 25.
The completion of the exercise will pave the way for holding elections in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. This would be the first election in the UT after the abrogation of Article 370 and bifurcation of the erstwhile state of J&K into two Union Territories by the BJP-led NDA government in August 2019.
The ECI announced a revision of electoral rolls after the completion of the delimitation exercise
After the completion of the delimitation exercise in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, the Election Commission of India ordered pre-revision activities in the UT of Jammu and Kashmir on 10th June 2022, which primarily included the task of mapping the existing electoral rolls of 83 pre-delimitation constituencies to the post-delimitation 90 Constituencies, in accordance with the Delimitation Commission's Order, rationalization of polling stations and integrations of the electoral rolls.
On completion of post-delimitation follow-up and pre-revision activities, the Commission ordered a special summary Revision of Photo Electoral Rolls in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, with reference to 01-10-2022 as the qualifying date.
As per the schedule notified by the Commission, the Draft Rolls were published on 15th September 2022. The draft roll saw an addition of 613 new polling Stations, which resulted in the total Polling Station count as 11,370 for the UT of J&K.
The total number of Electors on the Draft Electoral Rolls was 75,86,899 out of which 39,48,525 were Male Electors, 36,38,262 were Female Electors and 112 Third Gender Electors. A total of 39,192 Electors were flagged as PwD and 1,226 as marked electors. Photo coverage in the Electoral Roll stood at 99.99% as compared to 96.81% during the final publication in 2019.
The gender ratio of the Draft Electoral Roll was 921 as compared to the Census Gender ratio of 914, as per the projected population. The Elector Population Ratio of the Draft Electoral Roll was 0.52.
The emphasis of the Commission led by Chief Election Commissioner, Rajiv Kumar on the registration of young voters as well as the marginalized sections of society including persons with disabilities, third gender, women, etc., has yielded positive results.
- Claims and Objections were accepted from 15th September 2022 to 25th October 2022, i.e. for a period of 40 days. This was followed by a period of 15 days till 10th November 2022 for the disposal of all claims and objections.
- During this period a record 11,40,768 claims were received through Form- 6 for inclusion of names in the Electoral Rolls across the UT. Out of these, 11,28,672 claims were accepted and only 12,096 claims were rejected. This included 30,1961 claims of inclusion in the age group of 18-19. A total of 4,12,157 requests for deletion were received out of which 3,58,222 were accepted and 53,935 were rejected.
- This resulted in a net increase of 7,72,872 electors in the Final Electoral Roll, or a 10.19% net increase of the registered electors over the Draft Roll.
- This was for the first time in the history of J&K that more than 11 lakh names were included in a single SSR period.
- Overall net addition of 7,72,872 electors i.e. more than 10% of the draft electors is a milestone as the best figure till date even in Election year SSRs was less than 2 lakh.
- Gender ratio has shown a remarkable increase by 27 points and stands at 948, which is much above the Census gender ratio of the UT. Overall there has been a 6% increase in the Elector Population Ratio making it 58% from 52%.
- The Photo coverage in the Electoral Roll was maintained at 99.99% showing that no new entry without a proper photograph has been allowed in the Electoral Roll. There are 57,253 marked PwD electors in the Final Electoral Roll, an increase of 46% over the draft roll.
Process to upgradation to continue
Though the special summary revision-2022 culminated with the publication of final electoral rolls in the UT today, the process of continuous upgradation shall however continue and any eligible citizen who has been left out of the electoral roll can apply through any of the modes of registration, i.e. Online though NVSP portal, Voter Helpline APP, Voter Portal or Offline by making an application to the ERO concerned.
With the implementation of four qualifying dates as part of the Commission's Electoral reforms, the qualifying date would get updated to 1st January 2023, after 31st December 2022, paving way for all those young citizens to get registered, who have attained the qualifying age of 18 years between 1st October 2022 and 1st January 2023.
