Gautam Buddha Nagar will hold special voter enrolment and correction camps on October 17 and 24 after around 3.6 lakh names from the district were left out of the final electoral roll following Uttar Pradesh’s Special Intensive Revision exercise.
Booth Level Officers will be available at every polling booth in the district from 10 am to 4 pm on both days, according to election officials cited by The Indian Express. The camps will focus on eligible residents who were not included in the final roll published on April 10, as well as first-time voters and other categories requiring verification or correction.
The camps follow a direction from Uttar Pradesh’s Chief Electoral Officer for special drives in areas where eligible voters may have been left out after the revision process. District election officers met supervisors on Wednesday and asked them to coordinate immediately with Booth Level Officers in their respective areas.
Officials also informed the officers that people being added to the electoral roll under the special drive will not be required to provide information related to the Special Intensive Revision. New voter registrations will be processed through Form 6. Applicants will need to attach a recent photograph, date of birth and proof of address with the form, an election officer said.
The enrolment effort will prioritise Indian citizens born before January 1, 2009, who are aged 18 years or above. Officials said the camps would also focus on women voters. Physical verification of voters aged 80 and the recording or appropriate marking of details of third-gender citizens are also planned during the exercise.
The district’s camps are being organised against the backdrop of a wider controversy over the Special Intensive Revision. The Indian Express has reported that more than 13 crore names were deleted from draft electoral rolls across 30 states and Union Territories during the exercise, while an investigative report published on September 23 pointed to an internal rift within the Election Commission. The report also said the Commission directed 20 states and Union Territories where the exercise had concluded to conduct special drives for voters left out of the rolls.
In Uttar Pradesh, 2.05 crore names were removed during the 166-day revision exercise. In Gautam Buddha Nagar, the draft rolls had recorded 4.4 lakh voter deletions, while approximately 3.6 lakh names did not appear in the final electoral roll. The difference between the draft and final figures has made the district a significant local test of the corrective process ordered after the revision.
Election officials said a sufficient number of Form 6 applications would be available at the camps. A Booth Level Officer said applications submitted through Form 6 are added to the concerned officer’s pending work list on the election application, allowing them to be processed locally.
The camps on October 17 and 24 are the next scheduled opportunity for eligible residents of Gautam Buddha Nagar to seek inclusion or correction in the electoral roll through the district’s Booth Level Officers.
