New Delhi: “ Aapko kab pata chala ki aap mar gaye hain ?” a Jan Sarokar representative asked 51-year-old Kanta Prasad after he found “dead” written beside his name on the city’s draft electoral roll.
Five days after the draft roll removed nearly 47.7 lakh of nearly 1.45 crore voters listed in the current electoral roll, 2,28,764 Form 6 applications have been received in Delhi, with North West district accounting for 23,268, among the highest numbers, as people were compelled to register afresh. The Delhi chief electoral officer’s office advised citizens to check their names in the draft roll and, if missing, submit Form 6 along with the prescribed declaration and supporting documents for inclusion in the final roll. I have voted for the last 27 years.
The concerns echoed an observation by former Supreme Court Justice and chairperson of United Nations Internal Justice Council, Madan B Lokur, who said such cases could be easily verified by BLOs before genuine voters were removed. Marked “absent”, 49-year-old Laxmi Devi said the BLO had visited her home only once, when neither she nor her firefighter husband was home. “When we called up the BLO, she said there was no way out and we would have to register as new voters. “The whole exercise has become so citizen-centric, without taking into account that not everyone can understand the process, and needs to be assisted so that no citizen is deprived of their rights.”
He also questioned what document ultimately determines a person’s electoral identity. “All of these documents, be it Aadhaar, PAN or EPIC card, are issued by govt and Election Commission of India , and despite having these, names are being deleted. But why should I? As Mangolpuri became the first collective platform for citizens to question their deletion, Nikhil Dey of Mazdoor called for wider awareness campaigns from EC’s side.