CHENNAI: The final electoral roll released after the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Tamil Nadu showed that the size of the electorate shrunk by 10% or more in 103 of the 234 assembly constituencies in the state compared to the number of electors in these constituencies prior to SIR.
Of these, the size of the electorate shrunk by 25% or more in 26 assembly constituencies. Thousand Lights constituency saw the highest percent of deletions, marginally exceeding Anna Nagar constituency, also in Chennai, which saw the highest of over 40% deletions in the draft SIR rolls released in December.
As per the final SIR rolls, Thousands Lights had 1,53,908 voters, compared to 2,38,374 before SIR. This is a drop of 35.4%. The top nine constituencies that saw highest percent of deletions are in Chennai.
These nine are followed by Tiruppur, where the number of electors dropped from 2,72,295 before SIR to 1,93,614, a drop of 28.9%. Ariyalur and Jayankondam, both in Ariyalur districts, saw the lowest percent of decline of less than 2%. Their electorate remained at around 2.61 lakh, a marginal drop of around 4,000 voters during the SIR process.
The proportion of male and female electors remained roughly the same in the final SIR. There are 2,89,60,838 woman voters, 2,77,38,925 male voters and 7,617 third-gender voters, taking the total to 5,67,07,380. In only 19 assembly constituencies, men outnumbered women. At the district-level as well, Dharmapuri is the only outlier with more men than women.
To questions on voters marked in the “no mapping” or “logical discrepancies” categories, Chief Electoral Officer Archana Patnaik said majority of them have been included after they submitted relevant documents as evidence.
She said barring around 2,000 names, the remaining around 13 lakh voters to whom notices were issued for ‘mapping issues’ have been included in the electoral rolls. Similarly, she said the majority of the roughly 1.58 crore voters, who were marked for “logical discrepancies”, have been included in the final rolls.
The CEO said that anyone with grievances about the final electoral rolls can appeal to the district electoral officer. If dissatisfied, a second appeal may be preferred before the CEO within 30 days of the DEO’s order.