Election officials in Jharkhand have apologised after 55 voters were wrongly placed on the ASDD list during the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, although they had submitted their enumeration forms. The affected voters were from Ranchi, Dhanbad, Jamshedpur and other districts, according to chief electoral officer K Ravi Kumar.
The voters were incorrectly categorised as absent, shifted, dead or duplicate during preparation of the draft electoral roll. The errors were detected during verification and the claims and objections process, after which the voters’ status was corrected. Electoral registration officers and assistant electoral registration officers apologised to the affected electors, a senior election official said.
Kumar said the mistakes came to light through the revision process and that election officials had expressed regret. The cases nevertheless raise questions about the quality of field verification carried out before the draft roll was prepared.
A senior election official said the errors were “well within the acceptable limit”, noting that the election machinery had processed 2.65 crore enumeration forms. Officials also rejected allegations by political parties and activists that eligible voters had been deleted on a large scale. They described the claim as “ill-founded”, saying that no party or activist had published a list of genuine electors who were wrongly included in the ASDD category.
Under the SIR process, booth-level officers were required to conduct house-to-house enumeration and verify electors before the draft roll was prepared. The 55 cases were attributed to lapses during draft-roll preparation rather than to a confirmed mass deletion of eligible voters.
The ASDD list was displayed at polling stations and uploaded on the websites of the chief electoral officer and district election officers to allow scrutiny. Hard copies were provided to booth-level agent-2 representatives of recognised political parties, while soft copies were also shared with them.
The disclosure comes amid wider scrutiny of the handling of enumeration forms. In Ranchi, more than 150 booth-level officers reportedly received show-cause notices over complaints related to the SIR exercise. The report did not establish whether the errors involving the 55 voters resulted from negligence or deliberate action by booth-level officers, supervisors or other officials.
Kumar said the SIR was a transparent and participative process with concurrent auditing by political parties and other stakeholders. The corrected cases will remain part of the revision process as officials address claims, objections and complaints linked to the draft electoral roll.
