Srinagar:After completion of delimitation and revision of electoral rolls, which took nearly five months, Jammu and Kashmir’s final electoral rolls were published here today.
With deletion of expired voters and addition of over seven lakh new eligible electors, J-K’s total electorate has now risen from 76 lakh to 83 lakh in 90 Assembly segments.
According to the indicative figures, there is an increase of around seven lakh voters that has taken the total figures to 83 lakh. Jammu and Kashmir had 76 lakh voters when the last Summary Revision was undertaken in 2018.
Nearly 13,000 employees were involved in the hectic exercise. The Election Commission had ordered Special Summary Revision for J&K on July 1.
The Delimitation Commission has allotted 47 Assembly seats to Kashmir division and 43 to Jammu region.
All 20 Deputy Commissioners in Jammu and Kashmir had been designated as District Electoral Officers (DEO) for the electoral revision.
Meanwhile, Senior officials in the Electoral Office J&K, said the increase of seven lakh voters in the last three years is “normal”.
Citing the past figures, a senior official said, there used to be an average increase of two lakh voters every year. Therefore, an increase of seven lakh voters is very normal.
Earlier, Union Home Minister Amit Shah had announced that the elections in J&K would be held once Delimitation of assembly segments and revision of electorate is completed.
With both the processes completed, it seems likely that the elections in J&K would be announced anytime in the coming months.
Shah had said that the Election Commission can take a call on when to go for Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir, since the conduct of polls is the domain of the Election Commission.
While splitting Jammu and Kashmir into two Union Territories through the Reorganization Act on August 5, 2019, there has been an increase of seven Assembly seats of Jammu and Kashmir taking the total segments to 114—24 of which are reserved for Pakistan administered Kashmir while election will be held for 90 seats.
The erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir had 111 seats including 24 reserved for PaK while elections were held for 87 seats.
With the creation of Ladakh as Union Territory, four seats of the region were reduced and the Assembly was left with 83 seats. However, with an increase of seven seats, J&K UT will have an Assembly of 90 seats. Two women MLAs will be nominated to the House, as per the earlier position.
As per the official details by the ECI, the draft roll saw an addition of 613 new polling Stations, which resulted in the total Polling Station count as 11370 for the UT of J&K. Total Electors on Draft Electoral Rolls were 7586899 out of which 3948525 were Male Electors, 3638262 were Female Electors and 112 Third Gender Electors. A total of 39192 Electors were flagged as PwD and 1226 as Marked Electors. Photo coverage in the Electoral Roll stood at 99.99% as compared to 96.81% during final publication 2019. Gender ratio of the Draft Electoral Roll was 921 as compared to Census Gender ratio of 914, as per the projected population. Elector Population Ratio of the Draft Electoral Roll was 0.52.
The emphasis of the Commission led by Chief Election Commissioner, Rajiv Kumar on registration of young voters as well as the marginalized sections of society including Persons with Disabilities, Third Gender, Women, etc., has yielded positive results.
Claims and Objections were accepted from September 15, 2022 to October 25, 2022, i.e. for a period of 40 days. This was followed by a period of 15 days till 10th November, 2022 for the disposal of all claims and objections.
During this period a record 1140768 claims were received through Form- 6 for inclusion of names in the Electoral Rolls across the UT. Out of these, 1128672 claims were accepted and only 12096 claims were rejected. This included 301961 claims of inclusion in the age group of 18-19. A total of 412157 requests for deletion were received out of which 358222 were accepted and 53935 were rejected.
This resulted in a net increase of 772872 electors in the Final Electoral Roll, i.e. a 10.19% net increase of the registered electors over the Draft Roll.
The final Electoral Rolls have a total of 8359771 electors, out of which 4291687 are Male, 184 are Third Gender and 4067900 are Females. The Elector Population Ratio has increased from 0.52 to 0.58 during this SSR. The Gender Ratio of the Final Electoral Roll has increased from 921 to 948.
This was for the first time in the history of J&K that more than 11 lakh names were included in a single SSR period.
Overall net addition of 772872 electors i.e. more than 10% of the draft electors is a milestone as the best figure till date even in Election year SSRs was less than 2 lakh.
Gender ratio has shown a remarkable increase by 27 points and stands at 948, which is much above the Census gender ratio of the UT. Overall there has been a 6% increase in the Elector Population Ratio making it 58% from 52%.
The Photo coverage in the Electoral Roll was maintained at 99.99% showing that no new entry without a proper photograph has been allowed in the Electoral Roll. There are 57253 marked PwD electors in the Final Electoral Roll, an increase of 46% over the draft roll.
Though the Special Summary Revision-2022 culminated with the publication of Final Electoral Rolls in the UT on 25th November, 2022, the process of continuous updation shall however continue and any eligible citizen who has been left out of the electoral roll can apply though any of the modes of registration, i.e. Online though NVSP portal, Voter Helpline APP, Voter Portal or Offline by making an application to the ERO concerned. With the implementation of four qualifying dates as part of the Commission’s Electoral reforms, the qualifying date would get updated to 1st January 2023, after 31st December, 2022, paving way for all those young citizens to get registered, who have attained the qualifying age of 18 years between 1st October 2022 and 1st January 2023.
