VIJAYWADA (TIP): Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) of India Rajiv Kumar has said that firm directions have been given to all “formations of bureaucracy” to ensure free and fair elections in Andhra Pradesh.

Briefing the media here on January 10, after the two-day review meetings organized on the preparations for the general elections, Mr. Rajiv Kumar called upon the people in cities and towns to give up the “urban apathy” so that the overall voting percentage, which was quite good in the State, goes up further.

The Election Commission of India (ECI) had directed the enforcement agencies and the public administration at the district level to make a collaborative effort, rather than work in silos, to curb the flow of money and other forms of inducements, he said, and insisted that purity of electoral rolls remained a priority for the ECI.

Deletion of voters
As far as the complaints of large-scale deletion of voters were concerned, Mr. Rajiv Kumar said all deletions made since January 6, 2022, till August 30, 2023, were re-verified by the District Election Officers. Out of the 21 lakh deletions made, only 13,061 deletions (0.61%) turned out to be incorrect, he said, and added that they were since rectified. Mr. Kumar said the ECI was striving to provide best electoral experience to the voters and see that the political parties had a level-playing field. He did not mince words in saying that there had been a whopping 835% increase in seizures (cash and value of material allurements) in elections to the Legislative Assemblies of 11 States (not including Andhra Pradesh) from 2018-17 to 2022-23, from ₹366 crore to ₹3,427 crore, suggesting that influencing the voters continued to be a scourge being dealt by the ECI.

As far as the cases of door numbers with more than 10 voters were concerned, a house-to-house verification was done for 1.57 lakh house numbers having 20 lakh-plus electors, and the number of such houses decreased to 65,964 with 9.49 lakh voters at the time of draft publication of the electoral rolls on October 27, 2023. Of them, 4.52 lakh voters migrated to other places and 26,679 were non-traceable, and others were staying in those house numbers. Ninety-nine percent of the cases were resolved with shifting of address of migrated voters and deletion of non-traceable persons. A total of 2.52 lakh households were identified as having door numbers with junk / zero characters, and 97% of them were corrected.

Final rolls on Jan. 22
The CEC further said the final electoral rolls would be published on January 22 and the total electors stood at 4.07 crore as on January 1, 2024. The numbers of female and male electors were 2.07 crore and 1.99 crore respectively.

The State has 3,486 transgenders, 4.76 lakh persons with disabilities, 5.80 lakh voters aged above 80, 1,174 centenarians, 7.88 lakh first-time voters and 67,903 service electors.

The electoral gender ratio in Andhra Pradesh was 1,036 (female electors present in electoral rolls against 1,000 male electors), Mr. Kumar added. Election Commissioners Anup Chandra Pandey and Arun Goel, Senior Deputy Election Commissioner Nitesh Kumar Vyas, and A.P. Chief Electoral Officer Mukesh Kumar Meena were among those present.

One voter at one place
Mr. Kumar said a person can be a voter only in a single place and making false declarations in that regard would be viewed seriously and appropriate criminal action taken against him or her.

To be a voter at a particular place, a person should be ordinarily resident there in strict compliance with the relevant provisions of the Representation of People Act, he insisted.

This was keeping in view the likelihood of people who voted in Telangana trying to cast the ballots in AP also.