DCC says it is preposterous that there should be a shortfall of 63, 312 voters when compared to 1, 15,395 voters during the 2004 electoral roll, 12 years ago
DIMAPUR, NOVEMBER 8 (MExN): The District Congress Committee (DCC) said it has detected serious discrepancies in the recent enumeration exercise undertaken for finalising the preparation for the electoral roll for the election to the Dimapur Municipal Council.
According to a statement issued by the DCC, addressed to the State Election Commissioner through the DC Dimapur, the figures listed by the recent enumeration for the DMC election from the 23 wards, which has 102 polling booths was only 52,083.
Bringing comparison, the 2016 electoral roll figure showed a shortfall of 63,312 when compared to the official record of the total votes in the electoral roll prepared for the 2004 municipal council elections, which stood at 1, 15, 395.
The DCC said it was preposterous that there should be shortfall in the recent electoral roll when compared to the electoral roll of 12 years back, when the rest of the country recorded a trend of exodus of rural populace converging to the urban township.
Questioning how the only commercial cosmopolitan town cannot be only different from the rest of the country, the DCC expressed doubt on the enumeration exercise that “was adversely conducted since out of total 102 polling booths from the 23 wards, not even one polling booth showed an increase of voters from 2004 till 2016.”
Citing instance, it revealed that ward-19 which is New Market area showed a steep decline from 4000 voters in 2004 to just 632 voters in 2016 while ward-22, Burma Camp had decreased to 1915 voters in 2016 from 5425 voters in 2004.
The DCC also pointed out that the Election Commission normally accepted an increase of at least 3% voters per annum from every polling booth. So if the 3% increase was to be calculated from every polling booth in the 12 years, it came to 36% increase in the number of voters, it stated. And even if a minimum of 25% voters from the 102 polling booth in 12 years were accounted, the DCC said there should have been an increase of at least 1, 45,000 voters from the 23 wards.
The DCC also considered it unfair that the GBs and chairman of the respective ward were asked to identify voters from the 2016 ECI electoral roll to be used in the municipal election. It argued that the GBs and chairman of the different wards would surely be affiliated to one or the other political party or the supporter of one candidate or the others and therefore they would not be able to do justice to the voters.
In this connection, the DCC, through its president Kughato S Aye and general secretary Khrozote Kapfo, has urged the Election Commission to appoint authentic and genuine government enumerators and conduct intensive and thorough enumeration before the municipal election is conducted. Otherwise, the DCC would have no alternative but to seek judicial intervention, the statement read.
