Election Commission has not been able to solve the menace of 'duplicate' voters

Voters can broadly be classified into three segments. Voters who are born in that constituency. Voters who shifted from outside after marriage, buying property etc. and decided to live permanently in the constituency; and migrants who are not permanent residents but by virtue of living in a locality for more than three years, become eligible to vote in the constituency.

Unfortunately, the issue of duplicate voters and people getting enrolled in multiple places has not been satisfactorily solved by the Election Commission and ‘smart’ political parties have found ways to exploit it to their advantage.

Section 17 of the Representation of the Peoples Act, 1950 lays down that getting enrolled as a voter from more than one place is a crime, which is punishable with imprisonment up to a year in jail and/or a fine. But the law has failed to check the phenomenon of duplicate voters and rarely, if at all, have voters been sent to jail for such duplication. Nor, for that matter, have officials responsible for maintaining the electoral rolls.

Indeed, in every constituency there are thousands of voters who are enrolled at multiple places but the ECI failed to weed them out. Some of them are relatively innocent and are unaware of the legal provision. They get themselves enrolled in a new constituency without getting their names deleted from the list at their earlier place of residence. But there are also many who apparently do it knowingly in order to get undue benefits from political parties and candidates.

There is absolutely no reason to believe that the ECI isn’t aware of the duplication. The Commission has even created an electorate database under ERONet. This system can identify duplication of names in electoral rolls, but only within the same state. So, if a voter from one state is also enrolled in another state, he falls through the net and goes unchecked. Even within the state, there are still many duplicate voters. They can be easily weeded out but the issue is often enough ignored.

This writer too was shocked to discover a large number of duplicate voters while studying the elecatoral lists during the lastyear’s assembly election in Bengal. This writer out of sheer curiosity had volunteered to work with a political consultant and learn how elections are actually conducted and how campaigns are run.

With the help of a handful of interns, local party workers, local councillors and an agency, which will remain unnamed, it was possible to weed out an average 2,000-3,000 duplicate voters from each of the 40-odd constituencies where this group worked. This was done well before the elections and even party functionaries were amazed to discover that a voter enrolled in Kolkata was also enrolled as a voter in Madhubani in Bihar or families listed in rolls of ‘Behala Purba’ were also voters in UP’s Ballia.

Obviously, the deletion or addition of a few thousand names can affect the outcome of the election. Such voters are cleverly used during multiphase elections in different states and constituencies when these voters are mobilized to vote from one place to another. Those who vote in phase one can also vote in the last phase. For example, a voter who has exercised his franchise in Ghaziabad may also cast his vote in Ghazipur also, that is if he wishes to use the loopholes within the system. Those who are in the game of electioneering work day and night to make the voter list favourable.

Recently, during the first phase of UP elections, polling was low in urban constituencies like Ghaziabad and Noida. One of the reasons was that duplicate voters couldn’t be mobilized due to Covid restrictions in place. Most of them moved back to their native places due to lockdown fears and lack of employment. They would still have managed to votein this election but only at their original place of residence.

Another classic example is of Gujarat Assembly elections of 2017. An analysis revealed that BJP lost in every constituency where Gujarati voters had a say. But in urban seats, where migrant voters mattered, like in Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, and Rajkot, BJP made a clean sweep. The party picked up as many as 44 out of 55 seats in these four major urban centres.

Had the opposition checked the duplicate voters, results would have been different in the toughly fought contest. Most of these voters, the poor migrants, could have been easily lured with a petty amount and a holiday by their contractor or the employer. No prizes for guessing which party does have the power to influence such voters these days.

How can this be checked? ECI can clean up the electoral roll by linking the voter id to Aadhaar, and also by insisting on biometric verification before voting.

There are, however, two problems. This practice can be discriminatory unless every citizen has a correctly issued Aadhaar in his name. The other problem is that the Aadhaardatabase itself can be flawed. Significantly, last year the ECI and the Government did announce that the electoral rolls would be linked with Aadhaar. But for whatever reason, both seem to have lost their fervour for the scheme.

Till then, political parties themselves, especially in states with large migrant populations, can check the names of migrants in the voters’ list with the electoral rolls in their native places. It is in their interest to clear out such duplicate voters if they don’t want to see results of Gujarat 2017, Tripura 2018 and Karnataka 2018 state assembly elections repeated again.

(This was first published in National Herald on Sunday)