THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In the run up to the Lok Sabha election, close to 3 lakh youths in the age group of 18-19 years have been enrolled in the state’s electoral roll during the past five months. The number of young voters that stood at 77,176 when the draft voters list was brought out on October 27 last year, rose to 2.88 lakh on January 22 when the final electoral roll was published. It further rose to 3.70 lakh on March 18.
Chief Electoral Officer (Kerala) Sanjay Kaul said the rise in enrolment of young voters is the highest in the country during the same period. The CEO was addressing a news conference after chairing a meeting with political party representatives here on Wednesday.
The CEO said the state has a total of 2.72 crore voters as on March 18. This included 1.31 crore men, 1.40 crore women and 337 electors in the transgender category. The state has 24.9 lakh voters in the age group of 85 years and above.
The revision of voters’ list was currently under way and March 25 has been set as the cut off date to apply for enrolment so as to be eligible to vote in the Lok Sabha election on April 26. The new applicants will be included in the supplementary voters’ list to be brought out on April 4.
The state has a total of 25,358 polling booths, including 181 auxiliary polling stations set up in areas where there are a large number of voters. Drinking water, toilet facility, ramps, wheelchairs and power supply have been ensured. Help-desks will be set up on the polling station premises for assisting the voters.
In a first, creches will be set up in polling locations with more than four booths. Webcasting facility will be extended to an additional 20 to 30% of the polling booths.
“As per the preliminary assessment, 777 polling stations in the state have been identified as ‘sensitive’. The state expects 70 companies (around 8,400 personnel) of security forces to be deployed for the election, the CEO said.
Asked about the case in Kozhikode where a person was found to possess three electors’ photo identity cards, the CEO said a criminal case would be filed against the applicant. “Our assessment is that it was a deliberate attempt to claim that the electoral roll is not good,” Kaul said. He admitted that there was a lapse on the part of the booth level officer in not properly cross-verifying the application.
On complaints of a large number of duplicate entries in the electoral roll in Attingal constituency, the CEO said only 390 entries were found to be erroneous. On duplicate entries detected across the state over the past week, he said they constituted only 0.01% of the total electorate of 2.72 crore.
