Jammu And Kashmir: Stage Set For Assembly Polls, Final Electoral Roll With 86.93 Lakh Voters Published

JAMMU: The final electoral roll of Jammu and Kashmir has been published with the addition of more than 2.31 lakh voters, officials said. The final electoral roll has a total of 86.93 lakh voters -- 44.34 lakh males, 42.58 lakh females, Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Jammu and Kashmir Pandurang K Pole said on Monday.

The release of the electoral roll paves the way for holding of various polls in the Union Territory. "The final electoral rolls have been published here today in all polling stations, offices of electoral registration officers, district election officers and hosted on the website of CEO registering an addition of 2.31 lakh new voters," an official spokesman said.

According to the CEO, 86,000 names have been deleted because of death, shifting or other reasons besides correction in details of 1.45 lakh electors during the process. "As of now, there are 86.93 lakh electors including 44.35 lakh male and 42.58 lakh female voters. The elector population ratio has improved from 0.59 to 0.60 and the gender ratio from 924 to 954", the spokesman said.

As per the detailed directions of the Election Commission of India (ECI), the process of special summary revision of electoral roll with qualifying date as January 1, 2024 was carried out. During the process, 259 new polling stations were created after consultation with political parties, he said. The second stage activity was started with publication of draft electoral roll on October 17, 2023.

For involving stakeholders, including recognised state and national parties, the district election officers (DEOs) held meetings with them, briefed them about the whole process to be followed and appealed them to participate in the process by appointing booth level agents, so that they can assist the booth level officers in addition, deletion, correction, transposition of eligible voters.

The EROs as per the detailed directions of the ECI accepted claims and objections and following the due process, decided on them by January 12. They also dealt with demographically similar entries and photo similar entries at the part and AC level. In order to cover the eligible voters of Kashmir migrants, four special AEROs held camps in their areas and the process was supervised by the relief and rehabilitation commissioner (migrant), he said.

The endeavour was made to cover the specially abled persons and elders above the age of 80 years so as to mark them on electoral rolls, he said.