Patel has represented Mumbadevi, a mixed-population constituency that includes Dongri, Nagpada and Kamathipura, since 2009. (File photo)
MUMBAI: Nearly 40% of Mumbadevi assembly constituency’s voters have been categorised as permanently shifted, dead, untraceable/absent, duplicate and ‘other reasons’ during SIR, local Congress MLA Amin Patel has alleged.
Even where available, BLOs have no clarity on Form 6’s format following what SC said,” Patel said. Patel has represented Mumbadevi, a mixed-population constituency that includes Dongri, Nagpada and Kamathipura, since 2009. Form 6 has recently been at the centre of controversy after a CJI-led SC bench rejected the Election Commission’s claim that the court had upheld the declaration attached to the form, making it clear that it had not approved any modification to it.
Patel said that several voters had been wrongly placed in these categories and wrote to Maharashtra chief electoral officer S Chockalingam, urging him to ensure that no voter was marked in any of the five categories or otherwise excluded due to errors in data entry, processing or verification. Officials said BLOs collected information and signatures from residents, while voters reported dead, shifted elsewhere, absent from their registered addresses or found to have duplicate entries in another area were excluded from the draft roll.
He also questioned how information collected during SIR could be excluded from the draft roll and listed several voters “wrongly left out”. In his letter, Patel said BLOs had visited voters and collected the prescribed forms and details, making it difficult to understand how some of the same voters were subsequently excluded from the draft roll. “Forms have been accepted from people, yet they have been marked as dead. There are so many such cases. In some places, people have been unable to find BLOs. The seat is considered a Congress stronghold. He urged election authorities not to remove voters without proper verification. In Maharashtra, the enumeration exercise has been completed and electoral officials have verified voter details.