The surprisingly large number of entries in the Absent, Shifted, Deceased (ASD) list in some of the polling booths in Kerala has sparked concern ahead of the formal publication of the draft electoral rolls on December 23 under the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR).
For instance, one polling booth in the Thiruvananthapuram Assembly constituency – Northern portion of East Building of Sree Pattom Thanu Pillai UPS Sreevaraham (No - 138) – has 704 entries in the ASD list. While 16 are names of deceased voters, the vast majority, 592, have been listed as ‘Untraceable/Absent.’ The date of generation of the list is given as December 17.
In the Vattiyoorkavu constituency, also in Thiruvananthapuram district, booth number 154 (Kendriya Vidyalaya, Pattom (Western portion of main building) has 347 entries in the ASD list. Of these, the number of entries in the ‘EF Refused’ category – where electors presumably refused to return the enumeration forms – is 116. Further, 102 voters have been listed as ‘Untraceable /Absent.’ The date given on the list is December 11.
The ASD list has five categories - dead voters, untraceable/absent voters, permanently shifted, duplicated names and an ‘others’ category which includes people who decline to accept or return the enumeration forms (EF Refused). The ASD list now online has a little over 24.08 lakh names in it. This includes 6.45 lakh listed as ‘untraceable,’ and 8.16 lakh categorised as ‘permanently shifted.’ The ‘others’ category has over 1.60 names, while deceased voters number over 6.49 lakh and duplicated names, 1.36 lakh.
