Bhubaneswar: BJD MP Sasmit Patra on Tuesday wrote to chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, raising serious concern over the proposed deletion of nearly 9.8 lakh voters in Odisha during the elector mapping exercise ahead of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.Patra warned that alleged procedural lapses and inadequate verification could lead to large-scale disenfranchisement of eligible voters. In his letter, the MP said while updating electoral rolls was essential for fair elections, the scale, pattern and process of the proposed deletions were “deeply concerning”. He claimed there was prima facie evidence of procedural irregularities and risk of wrongful deletions.Among concerns flagged were complaints from voters alleging they had been wrongly identified for deletion despite being present at their recorded addresses, and reports that mandatory field verification by booth-level officers was skipped in several cases. Patra also pointed to the unusually high number of proposed deletions compared to normal annual trends, and the filing of nearly two lakh objections (Form-7 cases) within a short period, forcing authorities to temporarily suspend scrutiny.The BJD MP said directions issued by Odisha CEO for re-verification, and assurances that wrongly deleted names would be restored, implicitly acknowledged flaws in the exercise.BJP countered the charges, with state media coordinator Sujit Das saying, “The BJD should refrain from politicizing the issue and instead assist election authorities in preparing a clean voter list, ensuring that only Indian citizens are enrolled.”As reported earlier, additional chief electoral officer Sushanta Kumar Mishra on Saturday asked electoral registration officers to thoroughly examine complaints of wrongful deletions.Chief electoral officer RS Gopalan said EROs have been directed to physically verify at least 50% of Form-7 deletion cases.
