With the date for Delhi Assembly polls round the corner, the office of Delhi’s Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) is facing a daunting task of providing voter identity cards to nearly 4.20 lakh new applicants and conducting the elections properly on December 4.
With just six weeks remaining for the polls, the authorities are running short of time and resources to prepare the new cards. Strangely, the Electoral office has received 4.20 lakh new applications for voter identity cards in the last 35 days. Currently, there are 1,14,91,653 electors in Delhi as per summary revision on September 9. Of these, 63,70,420 male, 51,20,690 female and 543 eunuchs are registered as voters in the national Capital.
This list includes more than 3.5 lakh first-time voters in the age-group of 18-19 years. Top sources told The Pioneer that total 4,21,410 applications have been received. Of these 80,487 were rejected.
The maximum of 22,219 applications for voter ID cards have been received from Matiala followed by the Delhi Cantonment from where 18,599 applications have been received.
The CEO office has received 15,991 applications from Burari; 14,001 applications from Mundka; 13,141 from Bawana; 12,018 from Kirari; 14,780 from Tughlakabad; 11,288 from Karawal Nagar; 10,281 from Viswas Nagar; 11,764 from Vikaspuri. Matia Mahal (1,490), Ballimaran (1,729) and Sadar Bazar (1,958) are among the constituencies from where least applications have been received.
The data further states that 74,225 applications has been received from the South-West district, 69,155 from North-West district, 52,122 from North district, 50,552 from South district, 30,946 from New Delhi district, 39,783 from North Delhi, 35,987 from West Delhi, 44,407 from East Delhi and 24,233 from Central district.
Officials are surprised with the number of applications in electoral offices of each constituency. People can avail the facility of enrolling themselves as voters till the last date of filing nomination papers.
Chief Electoral Officer Vijay Dev said that all those who have applied for voter identity cards would be given the same. “It’s the electoral office’s duty to ensure voter identity cards be given to all those who have applied for it,” he said.
It is pertinent to mention that most of the applications have been received from those constituencies where large number of bogus voters has been deleted by the electoral office in July this year. Assembly constituencies like Karawal Nagar, Matiala, Uttam Nagar, Okhla, Mustafabad, Kasturba Nagar, Najafgarh, Delhi Cantt, Bawana, Dwarka, Adarsh Nagar, Babarpur, Kirari, Rohini, Mangolpuri, Mundka, Kalkaji, Seelampur and Model Town were found to have the maximum fake voters. The electoral office of Delhi has deleted over 12 lakh bogus/fake voters from electoral list.
“Faced with this daunting task to provide voter identity cards to the new voters, election office hands are full as it is also supposed to hold election in 70 Assembly constituencies on December 4. Moving Government machinery EVMs and another logistics, election officer and their teams left with little time and it may not be possible to provide voter identity cards to all of them,” said a Congress leader on the condition of anonymity.