Aizawl, Sep 4 (PTI) Mizoram Chief Electoral Officer Garima Gupta on Friday met members of the Delete Church community in Champhai town, who have opted not to enrol themselves in the voters list, citing religious beliefs, official sources said.
Gupta visited the community members at Zotlang as part of the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls for first-hand knowledge of why they had opted out of the electoral process.
During the meeting, community members told the CEO that they did not want their names included in the electoral roll as they believed such an enrollment was incompatible with their religious beliefs, the sources said.
Altogether 309 voters, whose names have appeared in the last rolls, refused to be enrolled during the SIR on religious grounds, they said, adding that these people included Delete Church community members.
The chief electoral officer of Christian-majority Mizoram was accompanied by Joint CEO Ethel Rothangpuii and Champhai district election officials.
The Election Commission of India is conducting SIR to clean up the electoral roll by removing ineligible names and ensuring that all eligible Indian citizens are enrolled.
The exercise is nearing completion, with the final electoral roll scheduled to be published on September 7.
Meanwhile, District Election Officers (DEOs) across the state held meetings on Friday to review the SIR implementation and preparedness for final roll publication.
Apart from officials, representatives of political parties and major civil society groups attended the meetings.
According to the draft roll published on July 4, there were 8,28,906 electors, including 4,29,881 female voters across all 11 districts in the state.
Election officials said that a total of 46,163 enumeration forms (5.28 per cent) remained uncollected.
Of these, 21,295 electors (2.43 per cent) were found to have died, 13,978 (1.60 per cent) had permanently shifted probably to other states or countries, 8,333 (0.95 per cent) were untraceable despite repeated visits, and 2,248 (0.26 per cent) were already enrolled elsewhere, they said. PTI CORR NN
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