1,345 Claims, Objections Filed By Individual Electors Disposed In Bihar: ECI

(MENAFN- IANS) New Delhi, Aug 18 (IANS) With 14 more days left for filing claims and objections, the office of the Bihar Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) has disposed of 1,348 applications received directly from electors for inclusion or exclusion of names in the Bihar draft voter list, an official said on Monday.

The election office, including the team of Electoral Registration Officers (EROs), has so far received 45,616 claims and objections directly from electors concerning Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar, said an ECI bulletin.

It stated that, according to the rules, claims and objections are disposed of by the ERO/AERO concerned seven days after the verification of eligibility documents has expired.

Even after 18 days of the publication of electoral draft rolls, none of the political parties has filed any complaint, the poll panel said.

The ECI said that in Bihar, since August 1, as many as 1,52,651 new electors, who have turned 18 after the SIR exercise, have filed forms for inclusion in the voter list.

The SIR exercise in Bihar has been attacked by the Opposition parties over alleged irregularities, which they allege threaten to deprive lakhs of voters of their right to vote - a charge denied by the ECI.

The poll panel published its draft electoral rolls on August 1 and has kept a window of one month for people, political parties and their 1,60,813 lakh booth-level agents (BLAs) to bring their complaints and grievances regarding inclusion or exclusion from the draft electoral list.

The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) has 47,506 BLAs, the Congress has 17,549, and the Left has over 2,000, all adding up to over 67,000.

The ECI has been routinely reaching out to political parties to join the revision exercise and bring to its notice instances of disenfranchisement, if any.

“Submit your claims and objections to rectify any errors in the draft Electoral Roll of Bihar published on August 1. So far, not even a single claim or objection has been submitted by any political party,” the EC said in a statement.

The ECI highlighted that between June 23 and July 25, the Congress increased its BLAs to 17,549 (an increase of 105 per cent), RJD to 47,506 (an increase of 1 per cent), Janata Dal (United) to 36,550 (an increase of 31 per cent) and BJP to 53,338 (an increase by 3 per cent).

The ECI concluded the enumeration phase of the SIR from June 24 to July 25. More than 7.24 crore electors -- out of a total of 7.89 crore -- submitted their enumeration forms during the exercise.

At the end, about 65 lakh voters were found to be missing from the draft electoral rolls published on August 1. These included 22 lakh deceased electors (2.83 per cent), 36 lakh (4.59 per cent) who had permanently shifted or not found and seven lakh (0.89 per cent) who had enrolled at more than one place, ECI data showed.

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