There are doubts about whether the data collectors have gone door-to-door properly
Published : 05 Feb 2025, 02:38 PM
Although the data of about 5 million eligible voters has been collected in the voter list update, election officials have not met the “target” set by the Election Commission.
The number of new voters has dropped, as has the number of dead voters.
Under the circumstances, the commission’s Senior Secretary Akhtar Ahmed said they would investigate whether the information gatherers appointed by the EC went door-to-door.
The EC conducted door-to-door data collection from Jan 20 to Feb 3.
The next stage – which includes capturing photographs and collecting biometric data such as fingerprints and iris scans – commenced on Feb 5 and will continue until Apr 11. About 65,000 people are involved in this work across the country.
While presenting the latest update on Tuesday, the EC senior secretary said the data of about 5 million has been collected although the target was to gather information on about 6.1 million new and excluded voters.
This time, the number of dead voters is over 1.5 million, which is about 700,000 less than the last door-to-door update conducted in 2022.
Akhtar said, “Fewer dead voters have been dropped from the list in this update than in 2022. It's difficult to say why. But, we have yet to get the complete feedback from the field to the regional officials who are monitoring the process."
There are doubts about whether the information gatherers appointed by the EC have gone door-to-door properly.
The EC secretary said, “We will investigate whether the number of new voters should have increased further or whether we have been able to address everyone door-to-door."
Seeking everyone's cooperation in this regard, he said: "You are also welcome to share what experiences you have had in different places. It may be that [the door-to-door data collectors] did not go to certain places or could not collect the data when they arrived."
Excluded voters: 3,127,519. Of them, 1,464,380 are male, 1,662,992 female, and 147 Hijra or transgender.
New voters: 1,849,326. Of them, 953,312 are male, 895,776 female and 238 Hijra or transgender.
Dead voters: 1,527,424. Of them, 873,429 are male, 653,409 female and 588 Hijra or transgender.