30000 to miss voting

About 30,000 eligible voters will miss the chance of exercising their franchise during the Adityapur Municipal Council election on March 25.

According to statistics available with the Adityapur Notified Area Committee (ANAC), only 71,000 names figure in the voter’s list.

ANAC officials said as per 2001 census, Adityapur had a population of 1.30 lakh, which over the years increased to 1.60 lakh, of which the number of voters is 1.01 lakh.

The section of people missing from the list comes from mostly wage earners and those residing in slums.

]“A major chunk of eligible voters will be deprived from casting their mandate as their names do not figure in the voter’s list. Such voters were also deprived of exercising their franchise in the last Assembly elections,” said an ANAC official.

“We cannot help. Notifications were issued in local and national dailies for getting voter I-cards done. But people did not turn up. Now their I-cards could only be made after the civic polls,” said B. Mandal, ANAC special officer.

“A considerable number of names have been left out because a majority of the people in Adityapur are industrial workers. They leave home early morning and return late at night. Lack of awareness and an absence of proper publicity has led to the problem,” said Arti Mukhi, contesting for chairman’s post.

To add to the woes of missing names, there are apparently several errors in the voter’s list. Numerous anomalies related to names, gender and wards have been detected. Numerous voters are also flocking at the office of ANAC and the district collectorate to get their facts corrected.

“We are getting frequent complaints of errors in voter’s list. Steps are being taken to correct them,” said Mandal.

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