Mumbai: With just five days left to submit enumeration forms for the special intensive revision, as many as 1.8 crore voters in the state and 30 lakh in Mumbai have not been traced so far. It means their names could be deleted from the draft electoral roll.This accounts for 29.6% of the voters in Mumbai and 18.4% in the state. Their enumeration forms are classified as “uncollected” and they are now on the list of absent, shifted, dead or duplicate (ASDD) voters.To give these untraced electors a chance, chief electoral officer S Chockalingam said that the list of ASDD voters has been published on district websites since Wednesday. “The public and political parties can check the names and report if the voter has been traced,” he said.He said that the untraced voters in the state were within the 13% to 20% range in the SIR across the country. And that a higher proportion of uncollected forms in urban areas was the norm owing to migration and shifting of residences within the city. “In Bengaluru, the uncollected forms were around 50% while in Chennai it was around 25% of the total voters,” said Chockalingam.Around 36 lakh voters, or 3.7%, in the state are yet to be categorised ,which means the proportion of uncollected forms could change.When asked if the untraced voters will be deleted, Chockalingam said, “We cannot say they will be left out. It means they were not present in the first place.”Within Mumbai, untraced voters were highest in the Sion-Koliwada assembly constituency (43.2%), which has a large slum population. This was followed by Mankhurd-Shivaji Nagar (42.2%), which has a large section of Muslims and slum-dwellers. Then came Worli (40.4%), which has multiple high-rises and a chunk of both Marathi and cosmopolitan voters.Uncollected forms were also high in the wealthy constituency of Malabar Hill (39.8%) as well as Mumbadevi (39.3%), which has a large segment of buildings undergoing redevelopment.“It has been difficult to trace voters in Mumbadevi because of redevelopment since many have shifted out to other areas. Also, the state’s booth level officers were not effective in reaching the voters,” said Mumbadevi MLA Amin Patel from the Congress.The draft voter list will be published on August 24 and suggestions and objections will be invited till September 23. “After the draft list is published, voters can make changes in their names and addresses. People can apply to be added to or deleted from the voter list. And 18-year-olds can register to vote,” said Chockalingam.From August 24 to October 22, the election authorities can send notices to those on the draft roll for documents needed. This will apply to those whose names were not mapped to the 2002 voter list. The final voter list after the SIR will be published on October 27.
