Karnataka’s total voter count has risen by about eight lakh in the draft electoral roll prepared under the Special Intensive Revision, even as election officials have not yet established who all the newly added voters are, according to a report by Prajavani.
The draft roll published in August listed 4.46 crore voters. A notice issued by the office of the state Chief Electoral Officer on October 16 put the total number of voters at 4.54 crore, representing an increase of approximately eight lakh. The final electoral roll is yet to be published.
An Electoral Registration Officer in Bengaluru told Prajavani that more than 10 lakh applications for fresh registration had been submitted across Karnataka. The officer said some of these applications may have been processed and automatically incorporated into the draft roll, but the authorities could not yet confirm how many of the additional voters were applicants who had sought new registration and whether others had entered the list through a different process.
The report said the position would become clear only after the final electoral roll is published. The state Chief Electoral Officer’s office has also indicated that not all applications for fresh registration were accepted. Applications were reportedly dropped when applicants could not be found during field verification.
The revision process has also flagged discrepancies in voter details and mapping. Notices were issued to 43.83 lakh voters. Of these, about 1.34 lakh notices had not received a response, according to the report. Booth-level officers reportedly found during home visits that many of the concerned voters no longer lived at the listed addresses. Several voters did not answer calls made to the mobile numbers recorded in enumeration forms, while some numbers were no longer active.
Some notices were received directly by voters, while political party agents also collected notices, sources told Prajavani. After field staff prepared records and uploaded the proceedings to the Election Commission’s ECINet portal, the system automatically generated Form 7 applications, which are used for objections seeking deletion of names from the electoral roll. These objections were added to the list of claims and objections, with the concerned Electoral Registration Officer shown as the applicant. Prajavani reported that reasons for some of these applications had not been entered.
An assistant Electoral Registration Officer in the Bengaluru South electoral district suggested that political party agents may have submitted enumeration forms to facilitate the inclusion of ineligible voters. The official described this as a suspicion arising from the discrepancies and the failure to locate some voters, rather than as an established finding.
The claims and objections process under the revision was scheduled to close on October 22. Until the previous Friday, 10.07 lakh applications had been filed for fresh voter registration, 1.22 lakh applications had sought deletion of names and 12.79 lakh applications had requested corrections to voter details. The report said most of these applications had been examined and disposed of, while applications whose applicants could not be located during field verification were rejected.
The final electoral roll will determine whether the increase reflected in the draft list consists primarily of valid new registrations and how unresolved discrepancies and objections have been addressed.
