SIR: With 1.10 crore voters under ASDDO, Karnataka to see one of the highest draft-stage deletions

With more than 1.10 crore voters — one-fifth of the State’s total electoral roll — marked under the Absent, Shifted, Duplicate, Dead and Others (ASDDO) category as on August 3, Karnataka is expected to record one of the highest draft-stage electoral roll deletions in the country. The ASDDO category currently covers 19.95% of Karnataka’s voters.

Karnataka has already crossed the highest draft-stage deletions recorded in Uttar Pradesh (19.09%) and Arunachal Pradesh (18.7%), where the exercise concluded in April. While remaining cases are still under adjudication, in West Bengal, the rolls shrunk by 12% due to logical discrepancies. Even among Phase III States, Karnataka’s ASDDO is significantly higher than Haryana (16.3%) and Andhra Pradesh (10.78%).

Likely to go up further

As recent trends show that more than 60% of the forms digitised each day are being went on to the ASDDO list, with over 2.41 lakh enumeration forms still pending digitisation, the ASDDO figure is expected to cross 20%.

For instance, in a day between August 1 and 2, forms ‘pending for digitisation’ reduced from 10.29 lakh to 4.89 lakh — meaning 5.40 lakh forms were digitised. During the same period, the ASDDO list increased from 1.05 crore to 1.09 crore, indicating that 4.02 lakh, or almost 75%, of the digitised forms were marked under ASDDO.

Highest ASDDO

Karnataka Chief Electoral Officer V. Anbu Kumar admitted that the ASDDO list is intended to result in deletions, with names to be removed from the electoral roll unless voters object and establish that they are not shifted or absent.

With the August 8 deadline for enumeration approaching, the pace of digitisation has picked up sharply. As much as 75% have been marked under the ASDDO category, however, daily data indicates that of every 8-10 lakh forms digitised, more than 60% and, in recent days.

The trend has remained consistent throughout the exercise. On July 22, 1.41 crore forms were pending for digitisation. While the ASDDO list had swelled up from 24.58 lakh to 1.10 crore within 11 days, by August 3, that number had fallen to 4.89 lakh.

Still have time

The CEO maintained that mahazars had been conducted in all such cases and that voters marked as absent or shifted can submit the relevant forms or get their enumeration forms corrected through the BLO until August 8. However, he did not explain where the 1.10 crore voters marked under the ASDDO category are ultimately being accounted for and due to what reasons Karnataka has bypassed other states, recording one of the highest ASDDO figures.