Meghalaya Shrinks Voter List: 1.8 Lakh Excluded After Major Revision
Meghalaya Shrinks Voter List: 1.8 Lakh Excluded After Major Revision
Massive voter list overhaul in Meghalaya! Over 1.8 lakh names removed from the draft electoral roll due to deceased, shifted, or duplicate entries. Public urged to check details and raise objections. #MeghalayaVotes
Meghalaya's draft electoral roll, published recently, has seen a significant reduction of over 1.8 lakh electors following a rigorous Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise. This comprehensive house-to-house verification across all 60 Assembly constituencies aimed to clean up the voter database by identifying deceased, shifted, untraceable, or duplicate entries.
Before the revision, the state's electoral roll listed 23,49,645 electors. The updated draft now stands at 21,69,243, marking a reduction of 1,80,402 names. Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) B.D.R. Tiwari provided a detailed breakdown of the excluded voters: 81,490 were identified as deceased, 45,011 as untraceable or absent, 42,532 had permanently shifted, 6,701 were duplicate entries, and another 4,668 cases involved refusal of enumeration forms or fell under other categories.
The SIR exercise was thorough, achieving 100% distribution and digitisation of enumeration forms, covering every single elector in the state. Officials also worked on linking current electors to past records. Approximately 7,75,665 electors, or 33.01%, were directly linked with the 2005 SIR database. Another 11,70,792 electors, making up 49.83%, were mapped through their parents' or grandparents' electoral records.
A group of 2,22,786 electors, representing 9.48% of the total, could not be linked to the 2005 records and have been placed under the "No Mapping" category. It's important to note that these individuals have not been automatically deleted from the electoral roll. Their cases will be individually examined during the claims and objections process, and they will receive notices and an opportunity to be heard before any final decisions are made.
The publication of this draft roll signals the start of the statutory period for filing claims and objections, which will run until September 4. Electors whose names appear in the draft roll and are successfully mapped with the 2005 records do not need to take any further action. However, those whose names are not mapped will receive notices for further verification. This extensive cleanup operation is part of a larger trend, as a similar exercise in Jharkhand also saw over 43 lakh names deleted from its draft voter rolls. This ongoing effort highlights the commitment to maintaining accurate and up-to-date electoral lists.
