Srinagar: Paving way for the conduct of the first-ever assembly polls in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir after 5 August 2019, I.e the abrogation of Article 370 (autonomous status); the Election Commission of India on Friday concluded d first special summary revision (SSR) exercise by adding 613 new polling stations and nearly 8 lakh new voters, taking the total number of eligible voters in J&K to 7586899.
According to an official spokesperson, 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 772872 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,” he said.
The spokesperson said that in the revised electoral roll, the gender ratio has shown a remarkable increase of 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%,” he said.
He said that 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 57253 marked PwD electors in the Final Electoral Roll, an increase of 46% over the draft roll,” he added.
However, the spokesperson added that though the SSR -2022 culminated with the publication of final electoral rolls in the UT on Friday, the process of continuous updation shall continue and any eligible citizen who has been left out of the electoral roll can apply through any of the modes of registration, including online throughness 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,” he said.
Giving further details, the spokesperson said that after the completion of f delimitation exercise in J&K, the Election Commission of India ordered pre-revision activities in the UT on June 10 this year, which primarily included the task of mapping the existing electoral rolls of 83 pre-delimitation constituencies to the post-delimitation 90 constituencies both 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 Special Summary Revision of Photo Electoral Rolls in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmirconcerningto 01-10-2022 as the qualifying date,” he said.
As per the schedule notified by the Commission, he said, the draft rolls were published on September 15, 2022.
“The draft roll saw an addition of 613 new polling Stations, which resulted in the total Polling Station count as 11370 for the UT of J&K. Total Electors on Draft Electoral Rolls were 7586899 out of which 3948525 were Male Electors, 3638262 were Female Electors and 112 Third Gender Electors,” the spokesperson said.
He said that a total of 39192 Electors were flagged as PwD and 1226 as Marked Electors, while Photo coverage in the Electoral Roll stood at 99.99% as compared to 96.81% during the final publication of 2019.
“Gender ratio of the Draft Electoral Roll was 921 as compared to Census Gender ratio of 914, as per the projected population. Elector Population Ratio of the Draft Electoral Roll was 0.52,” he added.
The spokesperson said that the emphasis of the Commission led by Chief Election Commissioner, Rajiv Kumar the n registration of young voters as well as the marginalized sections of society including persons with disabilities, third gender, women, etc., has yielded positive results.
He said that the claims and objections were accepted for 40 days beginning from September 15, 2022. This, he said, was followed by a period of 15 days til November 1010, 2022 for the disposal of all claims and objections.
“During this period a record 1140768 claims were received through Form- 6 for inclusion of names in the Electoral Rolls across the UT. Out of these, 1128672 claims were accepted and only 12096 claims were rejected. This included 301961 claims of inclusion in the age group of 18-19. A total of 412157 requests for deletion were received out of which 358222 were accepted and 53935 were rejected,” the spokesperson said.
He further said it resulted in a net increase of 772872 electors in the Final Electoral Roll, i.e. a 10.19% net increase of the registered electors over the Draft Roll.
“The final Electoral Rolls have a total of 8359771 electors, out of which 4291687 are Male, 184 are Third Gender and 4067900 are Females. The Elector Population Ratio has increased from 0.52 to 0.58 during this SSR. The Gender Ratio of the Final Electoral Roll has increased from 921 to 948,” the spokesperson added