Karnataka - Gulbarga   

Three lakh voters in Gulbarga district in three years?

GULBARGA: The sudden spurt in the number of voters in some of the Assembly constituencies, including Gulbarga, Shahabad, Jewargi, and Surpur, has raised doubts on the veracity of the electoral list for these constituencies.

Official sources told The Hindu here on Wednesday that duplication of names was rampant in Gulbarga and Shahabad Assembly constituencies.

The duplicate names found in voters’ list of other constituencies would be deleted after a physical verification, they said.

Within three and a half years, the number of voters in the district has gone up by nearly 3 lakh, comparing to the total number of electorate during the 2004 general elections. Incidentally, for the elections in 2004 and 2007, the 2001 census was taken into account.

The sudden increase in the number of voters in constituencies like Gulbarga by 67,230 and 45,733 in Shahabad Assembly constituency has surprised officials.

Similarly, the increase of 40,390 votes in Surpur and 39,490 votes in Jewargi Assembly constituencies represented by the former Chief Minister N. Dharam Singh, has raised many an eyebrow.

Another surprising factor is that the increase in the number of voters is not uniform in all the 13 Assembly constituencies in the district. In Chincholi it is 4,213, Chitapur - 4,514, Gurmital - 9,734, and Sedam -10,858.

Incidentally, both Gulbarga and Shahapur Assembly constituencies were captured by Bharatiya Janata Party in the last elections and in Kamalapur Assembly constituency, retained by the BJP in the past three Assembly elections, the increase in the number of voters is 13,492.

The Shahabad Assembly constituency is a semi-urban and rural constituency, and Gulbarga City Assembly constituency is completely an urban constituency.

Among the rural constituencies, the increase in the number of voters is high in Jewargi and Surpur, followed by Shahapur (20,415), Afzalpur (18,930), Yadgir (13,281), and Aland (11,363).

Another interesting feature of the updated voters’ list of the district is that women voters have outnumbered men in the district. There are a total number of 12,91,880 women voters as against 12,86,319 men voters.

In nine out of 13 Assembly constituencies, women voters have outnumbered men.

Chincholi, Shahabad, Chitapur, Sedam, Jewargi, Gurmitkal, Yadgir, Shahapur and Surpur were the Assembly constituencies were the women voters were more in number.

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