Patna: With publication of new Electoral Rolls in January 2015, Bihar’s Voter Population Ratio has increased to 0.58.
In actual figures, the number of registered voters in the state has risen by 23 Lakhs to 6.58 Crore. Out of these there are 3.52 Crore are males and 3.06 crore females.State’s Election Commission received, 32.03 lakhs applications for inclusion of name in electoral roll out of which 30.71 lakh were approved after verification.
At the same time, 7.52 lakh applications were received for deletion of names from the electoral roll, of which 7.41 lakh names were deleted.
The most significant development has been the percentage of voters in the age group of 18-19 years which rose from 1.85% to 2.71% within a year. This indicates a big leap in the number of young and new voters.
However, the biggest problem is the inclusion of duplicate voters in the roll. An October 2014 statistics indicated that Bihar had around 7-8 lakh duplicate voters in the electoral rolls. Before the 2014 Lok Sabha Elections, some 3.8 lakh duplicate voters were removed from the rolls.