The Election Commission of India, in a special drive undertaken recently, has registered 9.67 lakh new voters to the electoral roll in Maharashtra. Women outnumbered men in registrations during the special drive undertaken between October 3 and December 15, 2017.
During the drive, 4.81 lakh men, 4.85 lakh women and 159 people from the third gender category registered themselves as voters. With this, number of those on electoral roll has reached 8.49 crore or around 70% of the state’s population. These include 4.46 crore men, 4.03 crore women and 1,855 third gender voters.
The revised rolls were published on January 10.
Of the new registrations, 3.5 lakh are first-time voters in the age group of 18-19 years, though the unregistered voters in the age group are about 25 lakh. Of 40 lakh voters who have just become eligible to vote, just 17 lakh first-time voters have registered themselves.
“We received good response for the registration of new voters during the recent drive. The registration of first-time voters at colleges and universities was satisfactory too. The registration has taken the percentage of voters to 70%, though there is a whopping number of repeated voters on the rolls. The deletion of absent, shifted and dead (ASD) will be undertaken more strictly this year as elections are to take place next year,” said an official from the state branch of the ECI.
Around 3.65 lakh voters were deleted from the list for various reasons including shifting of residence, death, among others.
Mumbai city and Mumbai suburban districts saw the addition of 12,699 and 50,887 voters respectively. Ahmednagar district registered highest number of voters at 58,754, while Sindhudurg saw lowest addition of 4,994 voters.