Delhi Electoral Rolls: Shadow of Errors and Anomalies

By Deepak Parvatiyar

January 17, 2015

Everything is not hunky dory in Delhi as the capital city braces for February 2015 Assembly elections. A Congress party member has moved the Delhi High Court alleging there are many in the national capital with multiple voter identity cards with different addresses that implies that the same person could cast votes more than once using different cards. The petitioner had claimed there were over 41,000 forged voter identity cardholders in Mundka Assembly constituency alone.

Even an Election Commission analysis of 50,000 applications for voter registrations, out of around 1.5 lakh online applicants since November 10, 2014 in Delhi, found that 3,053 applications had the same user ID and 2,744 applications were from the same Internet Protocol address; 2,400 applications were made using a single email ID, and 603 applicants used single mobile phone number. However, as the Election Commission explained this could be possible since “not all may have a mobile number, an email ID or individual access to internet”.
Now consider another fact – a dozen of voter cards issued by the Election Commission in Delhi bore photographs of film stars!

Bogus Voters Rampant in Delhi Electoral Rolls

After the draft electoral roll for Delhi was published on October 15 and the summary revision was underway, a Congress petition to the ECI on December 20 last year had further claimed that “bogus” and “fake” names were present in the voters’ list of “almost all” of the 70 Delhi Assembly segments. It had claimed that as many as 31 per cent of the total voters in Vikaspuri Assembly segment had the same name as their father!

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It may be mentioned that around 1.30 crore voters have been enlisted in the voter list for the Assembly elections in Delhi. Reports suggest that already the process of deletion of duplicate voters from Delhi’s electoral rolls is underway and that the ECI has removed 60,000 dubious voters from the list.

Vested Interests at Work to Manipulate Election Process

The question arises as to how such a large number of bogus names found their entry into the electoral rolls in the first place without the connivance of the poll authorities?

On January 12, Delhi’s Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) admitted of the “mistakes” in the electoral list issued by the poll panel for the February 7 state elections before the Delhi High Court. The Commission also assured the court that it would examine the causes of the errors and punish the culprits.

However, as it was pointed out before the Chief Information Commission on January 13, which heard a separate Right to Information case concerning Assembly constituency-36, many such cards were issued on residential proof with MP or MLA recommendation. The Chief Information Commissioner called for an in-depth inquiry and recommended the Sub Divisional Magistrate (elections) to examine the issue. What causes concerns is his remark that the issue was “not taken seriously” by the respondent authority”.

Errors in voters’ list can impact the election outcome

Errors in the voters’ list, if not rectified on time, could impact the election outcome in Delhi in a big way considering that in the 2013 elections, there were 12 such seats where the margin of victory was less than 2000 votes.  Of them the margin of victory was less than five hundred votes in three constituencies – RK Puram (326 votes), Delhi Cantonment (355 votes), and Vikaspuri (405 votes). At two other constituencies, the margin of victory was more than 500 but less than 1000 votes; these constituencies were Sangam Vihar (777 votes) and Sadar Bazar (796 votes).

Incidentally, the AAP had won eight of these constituencies in 2013. Crying foul, the party now demands action against booth level officers for the anomalies in the voters list.

The Delhi High Court, on its part, has asked the ECI to verify duplication in voters’ lists and file an affidavit in this regard. The matter though, is not that simple and time consuming. The ECI has sounded the court that the “rectification will go on till filing of the nominations by the party’s candidates”.

Yet what seems even more disturbing is the AAP’s allegation that the issue is snowballing into a multi-state affair. It claimed that it found 14,71,025 voters in Delhi’s list, whose name, father’s/ husband’s name and age matched with the same details in Haryana’s voters’ list, Similarly, it claimed 12,53,779 voters in Delhi’s list were also listed as voters in Uttar Pradesh.

It is high time that the authorities check these anomalies and punish the culprits well on time before the Delhi elections.