With SEC extending final voter list deadline, BMC Mumbai polls may be delayed by 2-4 weeks

MUMBAI: With more and more complaints of major or glaring errors in the draft voter list for the upcoming Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections in Mumbai, the State Election Commission (SEC) has extended the deadline for the final publication of electoral rolls from December 5 to December 10. This takes the entire electoral process ahead by a few weeks and the final date of polling can be delayed by anywhere from two weeks to four weeks, say sources.

This is the second extension for declaring the voter lists and is likely to further delay the municipal corporation elections by at least two to three more weeks across Maharashtra.

The SEC announced on Wednesday that it is extending the deadline for the final publication of the voter list to December 10, allowing more time for scrutiny. The last date for the publication of the booth-wise voter list has also been pushed from December 12 to December 22.

The extension has been granted after the BMC and other civic bodies in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region received a large number of complaints about erroneous shifting of voters and duplicate entries. Opposition parties, including the Shiv Sena (UBT) and Congress, have submitted thousands of such complaints and while the UBT team asked for 21 days to submit complaints and revision, the Congress demanded at least a 15 day period to correct the errors.

Mumbai has over 1.1 million duplicate entries of 4.4 million voters in the list finalised for the BMC elections. The BMC has initiated a verification drive to eliminate such duplicate entries, to ensure that no voter casts a ballot at more than one polling booth.