EC publishes revised electoral rolls in UP

Lucknow, Jan 15 (UNI) After a delay of 12 days, the Election Commission today published the revised electoral rolls in Uttar Pradesh to be used for the state assembly polls.

Over 114.4 million electorate would now exercise their franchise after the deletion of over 3 million bogus voters during scrutiny.

Earlier, the revised rolls were slated to be published on January 3, but due to some hitche it got delayed till today.

State Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Anuj Kumar Bishnoi said here that of the total 70 districts, publication of rolls in 42 districts have been completed, while rest would be done by this evening.

He said it will take at least a month's time to post the rolls on the official website.

Taking serious note of irregularities in the electoral rolls in UP, the EC had deputed 21 central observers to oversee the process and they visited twice -- in November and January -- to find them.

CEC N Gopalaswamy along with two Election Commissioners Navin B Chawla and Dr S Y Qureshi visited UP last month after the observers submitted their report.

He toured UP twice in December and took stock of the situation in seven divisions.

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

Of the total voters, over 1.7 millions would be exercising their franchise for the first time .

UNI