Source: The Sangai Express
Imphal, October 12 2010:
Amid controversy over detection of 'abnormal' increase in population in some hill districts of the State in the Census exercise, manipulation in preparation of Photo Electoral Rolls in the hills has to come light wherein names of even a 60-year old married women have been entered under her fathers' name instead of her husband.
Disclosing this to The Sangai Express, a highly placed source said that all the manipulations, among other numerous discrepancies have been detected while checking possible duplication of electors in the ongoing exercise of preparing Photo Electoral Rolls in the State with the help of the de-duplication software.
Preparation of Photo Electoral Rolls is being carried out in Manipur under the supervision of Chief Electoral Officer of the State acting under the instruction of the Election Commission of India.
The source further disclosed that the software has detected duplication in the names of around 18,000 to 20,000 electors in the Electoral Rolls of the 60 Assembly Constituencies of the State which was published on September 10 this year.
Duplication of names of the electors in the valley districts is very low when compared to the hill districts, which is very high, with Senapati district accounting for the largest duplication, the source added.
Interestingly, names of many married women in the hill districts have been entered in the Photo Electoral Rolls under the names of their fathers and not their husbands.
There are also cases where the names of the electors, their father's names and the age and details are the same while noting it down in more than one constituencies.
In some other cases, photographs of the electors are different while their names as well as their father's names are the same.
Another glaring instance of manipulation in is entering the names of an elector under different serial numbers with one photograph taken with eyeglasses and another without eyeglasses.
Following detection of mass duplication in the hill districts, State Election Department has started verification of the Photo Electoral Rolls and a de-duplication campaign has been launched since October 4, the source informed, adding that the campaign will continue till October 19 .
In the last General Elections held in 2009, the number of electors in the State was 17,27,240 .
However, after the names of the duplicate, under age and deceased electors have been struck off from the list, the total number of electors remaining is said to be 16,80,674 .