Election Commission of India Preparing D-Voters' Database

* While some people with cases in FTs have no ‘D’ tag, others declared as Indians by FTs still carry tag ‘D’

D-VOTERS

STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI, Sept 9: Following a direction from the Election Commission of India (ECI), the State Election Department has started detailed review and creation of a database of D-voters in Assam. This crucial move is important for the preparation of the final photo electoral roll of the State slated to be published on January 4, 2019. The names of doubtful voters or D-voters have not been included in the complete draft of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) published on July 30.

The exercise gains significance against the backdrop of two aspects that came to the notice of the State Election Department during NRC update exercise. It found instances of people having the ‘D’ tag against their names even though they have been declared as Indian citizens by the Foreigners Tribunals (FTs). There are also examples of people whose cases are pending in the FTs but no ‘D’ tags have been appended against their names in the photo electoral roll.

This process of checking the status of all ‘D’ voters is being carried out after a gap of several years. The district election officers are involved in the entire exercise presently being carried out in the office of the Chief Electoral Officer, Assam, at Janata Bhawan.

The draft photo electoral rolls for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls have already been published in other states of the country. However, considering the mentioned discrepancies with respect to the ‘D’ voters in Assam, the ECI granted special permission to the Assam Election Department to carry out the detailed review for the compilation of an updated database on ‘D’ voters.

The tag of ‘D’ voter was first used in the 1997 voters’ list in which 2,20,209 such voters were enlisted. According to the electoral roll of 2018, the total ‘D’ voters were 1,25,328. Sarbhog Legislative Assembly Constituency (LAC) had the highest number of 7106 ‘D’ voters, followed by Jonia LAC with 5756 such names. Altogether eight LACs did not have any ‘D’ voters in the 2018 electoral roll.

The draft photo electoral roll in Assam will be published on September 16 and after claims, objections and hearing the final photo electoral roll will be brought out on January 4. The 2019 Lok Sabha election will be conducted with the final photo electoral roll.

The persons marked as D-voters are barred from contesting elections and casting their votes.