10.4L voters in Chennai likely to be removed from post-SIR draft list

CHENNAI: Of the 40.04 lakh voters in the 16 Assembly constituencies of Chennai, more than 10 lakh names are likely to be removed from the draft voter list after the Election Commission reported that their forms were ‘uncollectable’ during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise. The figure is from December 1, and is likely to go up by the time the work concludes on December 11.

The poll panel deems it uncollectable for five reasons: death, untraceable or absent, permanently shifted, double entry, and others.

In Chennai, the Booth Level Officers (BLOs) distributed 39,59,818 forms, which works out to 98.88 per cent of the 40,04,694-strong voters' roll. Of the filled-in forms, 2,27,9925 (56.93 per cent) have been digitised.

As of December 1, 8,39,100 have permanently shifted, while 1,49,696 have died since the last revision. There are 36,979 untraceable names, 14,594 double entries, and 601 deemed uncollectible due to ‘other’ reasons.

The seat that is set to lose the largest number of voters is Velachery (90,137), followed by Mylapore (88,280), Anna Nagar (84,358), Chepauk-Tiruvallikeini (83,787), Virugambakkam (79,159), T Nagar (79,027), and Kolathur (73,516). The least will be from Thiru Vi Ka Nagar with 32,795.

Speaking to the media after attending the all-party advisory meeting convened by Corporation Commissioner and district election officer J Kumaragurubaran, senior AIADMK leader D Jayakumar said the party has stressed that those who have moved from one constituency to another should not be denied the right to vote.

BJP State secretary Karate R Thiagarajan said each constituency would lose 50,000 to 1 lakh voters.