Jammu: The final electoral roll of Jammu and Kashmir was published on Friday with the highest-ever addition of more than 7.72 lakh voters, officials said.
The final electoral roll has a total of 83,59,771 electors — 42,91,687 males, 40,67,900 females and 184 third gender, Joint Chief Electoral Officer of Jammu and Kashmir Anil Salgotra said.
The release of the electoral roll paves the way for holding of Assembly polls in the Union Territory, the first since Article 370 provisions were abrogated and Jammu and Kashmir was bifurcated into Union territories in 2019.
“There has been a net increase of 7,72,872 electors in the final electoral roll, i.e. a 10.19 percent net increase of the registered electors over the draft roll,” he said.
The highest number of additions during a special summary revision was less than 2 lakh earlier.
The elector-population ratio has increased from 0.52 to 0.58 during this special summary revision (SSR), he said.
This was for the first time in the history of Jammu and Kashmir that more than 11 lakh applications for inclusion in the electoral roll were received in a single SSR period, Salgotra said.
After the completion of Delimitation exercise in Jammu and Kashmir, the Election Commission of India ordered pre-revision activities in the UT on June 10, 2022, which primarily included the task of mapping the existing Electoral Rolls of 83 pre-delimitation constituencies to the post-delimitation 90 constituencies, in accordance with the Delimitation Commission’s order, rationalization of polling stations and integrations of the electoral rolls, an official press release informed.
It said on completion of post-delimitation follow- up and pre-revision activities, the Commission ordered Special Summary Revision of Photo Electoral Rolls in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, with reference to 01-10-2022 as the qualifying date.
As per schedule notified by the Commission, the Draft Rolls were published on September 15, 2022. The draft roll saw an addition of 613 new polling stations, which resulted in the total polling station count as 11,370 for the UT of J&K.
Total electors on Draft Electoral Rolls were 75,86,899 out of which 39,48,525 were male electors, 36,38,262 were female electors and 112 third gender electors. A total of 39,192 electors were flagged as PwD and 1,226 as marked electors.
Photo coverage in the Electoral Roll stood at 99.99 percent as compared to 96.81 percent 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. The Elector Population Ratio of the Draft Electoral Roll was 0.52, a press release issued today informed.
It said the claims and objections were accepted from 15th September, 2022 to 25th October, 2022, i.e. for a period of 40 days. This was followed by a period of 15 days till November10, 2022 for the disposal of all claims and objections.
During this period a record 11,40,768 claims were received through Form- 6 for inclusion of names in the Electoral Rolls across the UT. Out of these, 11,28,672 claims were accepted and only 12,096 claims were rejected. This included 3,01,961 claims of inclusion in the age group of 18-19.
A total of 4,12,157 requests for deletion were received out of which 3,58,222 were accepted and 53,935 were rejected, the press release informed.
It said this resulted in a net increase of 7,72,872 electors in the Final Electoral Roll, i.e. a 10.19 percent net increase of the registered electors over the Draft Roll.
The final Electoral Rolls have a total of 83,59,771 electors, out of which 42,91,687 are male, 184 are third gender and 40,67,900 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.
It said overall net addition of 772872 electors i.e. more than 10 percent 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 percent increase in the Elector Population Ratio making it 58 percent from 52 percent.
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 through NVSP portal, Voter Helpline APP, Voter Portal or Offline by making an application to the ERO concerned, the press release said.
It said 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.
