

BHUBANESWAR: Names of around 20 lakh electors have been deleted in Odisha after completion of the SIR of electoral rolls in the state, officials said on Monday.
Chief Electoral Officer R S Gopalan said the total number of electors in Odisha now stand at 3.16 crore, of which 1.61 crore are males, and 2,774 belong to the third gender.
The Special Intensive Revision exercise, which was conducted across the state in two phases from May 30, ended with publication of the final electoral roll on Monday, he said.
There were nearly 3.34 crore voters in the state before the SIR, which decreased to 3.13 crore upon publication of the draft electoral roll on July 5, the CEO said.
During the enumeration phase (from May 30 to June 28), forms were distributed to voters through booth-level officers (BLOs). A total of 3,13,87,034 forms, constituting 93.97 per cent of the total electorate, were filled, Gopalan said.
The remaining 20,12,557 electors, whose enumeration forms were not received, got excluded from the draft electoral rolls, he said.
Of the 3.13 crore voters named in the draft electoral rolls, three crore electors were mapped either as self or as progeny, while 12.98 lakh voters remained unmapped, he said.
Later, the Election Commission issued notices to the unmapped electors for verification. In addition, notices were also served on 45.37 lakh electors with logical discrepancies in their entries.
During the hearings of claims and objections, the Commission found 44,777 electors ineligible and deleted them from the list, the CEO said, adding, at the same time, names of 2.90 lakh voters were included in the rolls.
After rationalisation, the total number of polling stations in the state stood at 45,250, the CEO said.