72,319 multiple-voter registrations deleted

As many as 72,319 names of voters were omitted from the 2012 electoral register, the latest one, due to multiple registrations, reports say.  

The annual report of the Department of Elections says, in the Colombo electoral district alone, there were 11,359 such names deleted from the register, besides 9,023 names omitted from the Gamapha district, 5410 names from the Vanni district, 4,067 from the Jaffna district, 4040 from the Kandy district and 3,951 from the Kalutara district.

The Department of Elections annually revises the electoral register to determine the total number of voters. The number of MPs to be elected from each district would depend on the number of voters.

However, 176, 534 names were removed from the 2011 electoral register due to the same reasons.    The Department says persons with multiple registrations, once identified through the enumeration process, were notified to keep their registration only under one address – the most preferred.

Last year, the Department also carried out a programme to register persons in the upcountry estate sector. There were difficulties in determining the ages of those persons in this sector due to the unavailability of documents to authenticate them. Also, there was emphasis on house-to-house enumeration in the north, except in a few areas where resettlement of displaced persons was underway. (KB)