As
you are aware, the voter rolls in the country are deeply
flawed. As opposed to many countries where the responsibility
for registering to vote lies with the voter, in India,
it is left to the Election Commission to prepare a list
of all eligible voters and delete the names of those who
either moved out of the locality or are dead. Given the
apathy of the government machinery, and the inaccessible
nature of the voter registration process, over a period
of time huge discrepancies crept into the voter rolls.
The errors in the rolls are primarily of two kinds, I)
errors of omission, i.e. names of people that ought to
be there on the list are not there and ii) errors of commission,
i.e. names of those people that ought not be there are
not deleted. On its own initiative Lok Satta conducted
a survey of voter rolls on a pilot basis in parts of 2
assembly constituencies in Hyderabad city. The pilot survey,
which covered approximately 8500 voters, indicated that
there are 48 % errors in the voter rolls! Based on the
results of the pilot survey, FDR/Lok Satta undertook a
much larger sample survey across the state. The scientifically
conducted survey showed that in urban areas there are
45% errors (26 % wrongly included and 19 % excluded) and
in rural areas there are 15 % errors (10 % wrongly included
and 5 % excluded) (The Jan-Feb 2001 issue of Lok Satta
Times which covered the issue in detail is enclosed).
The sample survey covered approximately 40,000 voters.
Given the demographic profile of India, where approximately
45 % of the population is below 18 years of age, on average
55 % of the population should be registered as voters.
But overall percentage of electors is 63.35%! In states
like Tamil Nadu, AP and Karnataka, the percentage of electors
is above 70 %.
Based
on the results of the survey, FDR/Lok Satta made a passionate
plea to the Election Commission to undertake: a) comprehensive
revision of electoral rolls and b) make the voter registration
process much more accessible by making post office as
the nodal agency. Subsequently we interacted with the
EC and the postal department to make this a reality and
fortunately, both of them agreed in principle and just
in the last month, the EC has formally met with the postal
department and initiated the process to make the post
office the nodal agency for voter registration.
Similar
to our earlier survey conducted in 1999, which has conclusively
established the serious flaws in the electoral rolls,
we propose to take up pre poll sample-survey of voter
rolls encompassing a sample size of approximately 100,000
voters across the state covering both rural and urban
areas.
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