50 lakh names axed from voters’ list

Mumbai: The Election Commission of India (ECI) has deleted as many as 50 lakh names from the voters’ list in Maharashtra after revision ahead of the polls, an official said on Sunday. Some of these names were registered multiple times or the voters concerned had died, he said. More names were likely to be deleted in the coming weeks as the process of authentication of voters was underway, the ECI official said.

It was an ongoing process but picked up pace in the last one year ahead of the Lok Sabha and Maharashtra Assembly elections, he said. "The special drive started in January last year and around 50 lakh names were found either entered multiple times or the person was dead and the name was not removed from the list," he said.

It was also found that names of many married women, who had relocated, were not deleted from the voters' list at their native places. At times, the changed names of married women were included in the lists at their relocated places without getting it removed from the previous list, he said. "To prevent further swelling of the voters' list, we asked our booth-level officers to visit every home and verify the names diligently," he said.

There were people who relocated after getting jobs and registered th-emselves as voters there but did not delete their names in the voters' list at their native place.