Jharkhand’s Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls has crossed 58,000 objections against possible name deletions, while more than 32.20 lakh verification and mapping cases remain pending ahead of the final roll scheduled for November 30.
The extended claims and objections period closed on Saturday after 7,676 Form 7 applications were digitised on October 30. The Chief Electoral Officer’s office bulletin said 15,16,582 applications had been digitised up to October 29. With the latest additions, the cumulative number rose to 15,31,964.
The applications digitised up to October 29 included 9,03,686 Form 6 applications for fresh enrolment, 50,955 Form 7 objections to proposed deletions, 5,61,818 Form 8 applications for corrections or transfers, and 123 Form 6A applications. The bulletin did not provide a category-wise breakup of the applications digitised on October 30.
The pending cases are separate from the applications filed during the claims and objections period. Figures updated up to October 28 showed that 22,86,247 of 45,49,961 logical discrepancy cases had been disposed of, leaving 22,63,714 cases pending. In the no-mapping category, 4,47,730 of 14,04,033 cases had been cleared, leaving 9,56,303 pending.
Together, the two categories account for 32,20,017 cases awaiting disposal. These relate to verification and mapping of electoral records rather than the Form 6, Form 7 and Form 8 applications submitted during the claims process.
The draft electoral roll published on August 5 had excluded 43.61 lakh names under the absent, shifted, dead and duplicate, or ASDD, categories. The exclusions reduced the electorate from approximately 2.64 crore to 2.21 crore. The volume of exclusions and the subsequent claims process have made the disposal schedule a central administrative task for election officials across the state.
Chief Electoral Officer K Ravi Kumar told The Times of India that more data on the disposal of claims and objections would be released on November 4. On Saturday, he held a video conference with district election officers to review preparations for the fifth meeting of booth-level officers and booth-level agents, known as BLA-2.
The review also covered Chunav Pathshala activities planned at all polling stations on November 4. These activities are part of the administrative process accompanying the revision and the engagement of booth-level functionaries with the claims, objections and verification exercise.
Under the revised schedule, disposal of claims and objections is to be completed by November 23. Quality checks and other formalities will follow before publication of the final electoral roll on November 30. The Election Commission’s next published disposal figures on November 4 will indicate how much of the pending workload has been processed after the claims window closed.
