EC takes serious note of electoral rolls revision in UP

Lucknow, Jan 8 (UNI) The Election Commission has taken serious note of irregularities in the electoral rolls in Uttar Pradesh and deputed 21 central observers to oversee the process before its final publication on January 15.

The central observers started work from today and will report to Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) N Gopalaswamy on January 12, after reviewing the process for four days.

It is predicted the publication of final draft of electoral rolls might be delayed, if the observers give 'negative' recommendation on the process.

The EC had already extended the publication date of final electoral rolls from January 3 to January 15, due to difficulty in addressing certain irregularities.

According to sources in the state election office here, the process for the timely publication of electoral rolls is underway and the 21 central observers have started the work of monitoring.

It will be second time that these 21 observers are in UP.

Earlier, they camped in the state from December 11 to 14 to oversee the electoral roll process and to review the making of Election Photo Identity Card (EPIC).

The CEC himself along with two Election Commissioners Navin B Chawla and Dr S Y Qureshi visited UP last month after the observers submitted their report. Mr Gopalaswamy toured UP twice in December and took the stock of the situation in seven divisions.

Two central observers, drawn from other states, were deployed each in four divisions of Meerut, Agra, Lucknow and Kanpur, while other divisions got one observer each.

However, the central observer of Allahabad division has already finished his work and left for New Delhi yesterday.

Sources said altogether about 114.4 million voters would be included in the final rolls after deletion of over 3 million bogus voters during scrutiny.

However, during the revision a total of 1.7 million voters were also added to the list.

In 2002 assembly poll, the total electorate in UP was 99.9 million, while in 2004 Lok Sabha polls, the figure stood at 110 million.

At present, the EPIC percentage in UP stands at 70.48, while effort are on to extend it to over 80 per cent within January.

UNI