The Assam government on Monday told the Assembly that there are 113,738 doubtful or D-voters in the state.
Assam parliamentary affairs minister Chandra Mohan Patowary laid out the D-voters’s data of the 50 election districts as per the final roll of 2019.
As per the data, Barpeta has the highest number of D- voters (17,227), followed by Sonitpur (16,437) and Nagaon (9,824). No such voter was recorded in Nazira and Sivasagar districts.
Patowary said as on August 31, 2019, foreigners tribunals (FT) declared 34,485 D-voters as foreigners and 62,130 Indians. He added that 24 D-voters declared foreigners by FT (19 in Lakhimpur, two in Udalguri and one each in Karbi Anglong, Goalpara and Guwahati) were deported.
A total of 221 D-voters, declared foreigners, are lodged in detention centres (103 in Tezpur, 46 in Goalpara, 33 in Jorhat, 25 in Kokrajhar, 12 in Silchar and two in Dibrugarh).
The Election Commission in November 1997 had said cases referred to FT and where the tribunals’ decisions not received by electoral registration officers, the names of such persons shall continue to be included “provisionally” in final electoral rolls but mentioned as D-voters. It also said as and when the decisions of the tribunals were received by the poll panel, their names would either be retained or deleted from the rolls accordingly. D-voters are barred from voting.
Altogether 100 FTs are operational in Assam. Following publication of National Register of Citizens (NRC) in August 2019, Dispur decided to launch 200 more tribunals and appointment of their members is over. But they are yet to be operationalised as the NRC authorities are yet to issue rejection receipts.
