NEW DELHI: In what could trigger a fresh political row, the number of electors in Delhi has decreased by 1.19 lakh in the past year even as the city’s projected population increased during this period.According to the final electoral rolls published by the chief electoral officer on Friday, the total number of voters in Delhi in January 2018 was 1,38,14,866 while the number decreased to 1,36,95,291 in January 2019. During this period, the projected population of the capital increased from 1.93 crore to 1.97 crore. Deletion of voters from the electoral rolls has been a subject of a political slugfest between AAP and BJP, with CM Arvind Kejriwal alleging that the saffron party had got 30 lakh voters struck off the rolls and BJP rebutting the charge.Chief electoral officer Ranbir Singh said the drop in the number of voters was the result of an intensive revision of rolls. “The names of those who are dead or permanently shifted as well as repeat entries have been deleted. During the revision of rolls, intensive door-to-door surveys were done,” Singh said.The poll panel carried out house-to-house verification as part of a special summary revision for 30 days in June last year. The survey was conducted by booth level officers for identification and removal of the dead/permanently shifted electors and inclusion of the left out (unrolled/perspective) electors in city.“Under this special drive alone, names of 1.41 lakh electors were added and 61,999 names deleted, which led to an overall addition of 79,515 electors,” an official statement said.AAP maintained that the deletion of voters was akin to electoral malpractice. “It has been done by the BJP in connivance with election officials. Muslims, Baniyas and Purvanchalis have been selectively targeted in the deletion of names. The voting rights of the people of Delhi have been snatched,” said AAP spokesperson Raghav Chadha Chief electoral officer Ranbir Singh said the updation of electoral rolls will continue till the eve of the LS polls. “Only those whose names are listed in the rolls will be allowed to vote. So, anybody who has a voter ID card but whose name does not figure in the electoral rolls should get his or her name included by filling up form 6. We want to include all the voters and leave none,” he said.According to the electoral rolls, the gender ratio of the electors in the national capital has improved slightly over the past year. Since 2014, when there were 1.27 crore voters in the city, the number has increased by 9.88 lakh.Of the 70 assembly constituencies, Matiala has the largest 3.69 lakh electors while Delhi Cantt is the smallest constituency with just 1.16 lakh voters. Tilak Nagar has the best gender ratio while Okhla has the poorest.To decongest the existing polling stations, the number of polling stations has been increased from 13,418 to 13,816 and the number of polling locations has been increased from 2,670 to 2,696.

Stay updated with all the Noida Latest News headlines here. For more exclusive & live news updates from all around India, stay connected with NYOOOZ.