Tamil Nadu voter list revision to begin in a week, says Election Commission

The Election Commission on Friday told the Madras High Court that the special intensive revision of the voter roll in Tamil Nadu will begin “in a week or so”, The Hindu reported.

The bench of Chief Justice Manindra Mohan Shrivastava and Justice G Arul Murugan was hearing a plea by former All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam MLA B Sathyanarayanan seeking the court's directions to the poll panel to revise the voter lists in 229 booths of the Thiyagarayanagar Assembly constituency.

The poll panel said that the petitioner's grievance would be effectively redressed during the state level revision of the voter list, Live Law reported.

Sathyanarayanan, who lost the 2021 Assembly polls in the constituency by 137 votes, alleged that there was a systematic failure in maintaining the voter list. He claimed that his loss in the election was because of mass deletion of genuine voters.

In his plea, the former MLA argued that the Election Commission had a legal and constitutional obligation to conduct a demographic audit of the voter list against the census data in the constituency, rectify incorrect deletion of names and ensure inclusion of eligible citizens, Live Law reported.

The bench adjourned the hearing by a week.

A special intensive revision of the electoral roll was conducted in Bihar in recent months ahead of the Assembly polls. The Election Commission is planning to hold the exercise across the country in phases starting November, according to reports.

In the first phase, the exercise will be conducted mainly in states where Assembly polls are expected to take place in 2026, The Indian Express reported on Thursday. Tamil Nadu is expected to head for polls in April.

Concerns have been raised that the process could disenfranchise several voters. The Election Commission has defended the voter roll revision as a clean-up exercise to remove names of the deceased, duplicate entries and undocumented migrants.

At least 47 lakh voters in Bihar were excluded from the final electoral roll published by the Election Commission on September 30 after the revision of the list.

In September, the Kerala Assembly unanimously passed a resolution against the poll panel's decision to conduct the revision of the state's electoral rolls in the state, saying that the “hasty” move could harm the rights of citizens.

Source: Scroll
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