Dimapur, November 8 : The District Congress Committee Dimapur has complained to the State Election Commission against recent enumeration of Electoral Roll for elections to the Dimapur Municipal Council and sought his immediate intervention and necessary action on the matter. The DCC has also demanded that the Commission appoint authentic and genuine government enumerators and conduct intensive and through enumeration before the Municipal elections are held, failing which it have no other alternative but to seek judicial intervention.
In a letter to State Election Commissioner, through the Deputy Commissioner Dimapur, DDC president Kughato S Aye and general secretary Khrozote Kapfo on Tuesday said during the recent enumeration exercise undertaken for finalising the electoral roll for elections to the Dimapur Municipal Council, some very serious discrepancies have been detected. These discrepancies must be one of the first of its kind in the history of Independent India, it stated.
The letter said as per the official records the total number of voters in the Electoral Roll prepared for the Municipal Council elections for the 23 wards including 102 polling booths during 2004 was 1,15,395.
With the nominal increase of at least 3 percent voters normally accepted per annum by the Election Commission in each polling booth, the number of voters should increase to 1,45,000 (25 percent increase) after a gap of 12 years, it said. But surprisingly, the draft Electoral Roll during 2016 showed a decline of more than 90,000 voters and a shortfall of 63,312 voters from total voters of 1,15,395 in 2004. It cited the ward No.19 in New Market area which showed a steep decline from 4000 voters in 2004 to just 632 voters in 2016 and ward No. 22 in Burma Camp where number of voters has come down to 1915 in 2016 from 5425 in 2004.
The DCC said when the rest of the Country has recorded a trend of exodus of rural populace to the urban townships in the recent past, Dimapur, the only commercial cosmopolitan town in the State, cannot be the only difference.
Questioning the enumeration exercise, the DCC said it was“adversely conducted”as out of the total of 102 polling booths from the 23 wards not even a single booth showed an increase of voters from 2004 till 2016.
It said though the GBs and chairmen of the respective wards were asked to identify the voters for the 2016 Electoral Roll to be used in Municipal election, it was not possible as there are no GBs and chairmen in some wards while some GBs and chairmen are affiliated to one or the other political party or supporters of one candidate or the other. “As such they will not be able to do justice to the voters,” it felt.
