Four votes per ward triggers confusion in Navi Mumbai; minister Ganesh Naik among those affected

Mumbai, Jan 15 (PTI) A ward restructuring that allowed electors to cast four votes instead of one in the Navi Mumbai civic polls triggered a widespread reshuffle of booths on Thursday, leading to confusion, with even senior minister and BJP leader Ganesh Naik briefly unable to locate his name on the voters' list.

Naik, in his 70s, reached his regular polling booth to cast his vote but could not find his name on the electoral roll.

He was redirected to another polling centre, where his name was again missing. Naik blamed mismanagement by the State Election Commission and remarked that if a senior minister could face such hurdles, the situation of common voters could well be imagined.

The episode soon went viral, giving opposition parties an opportunity to allege that the confusion reflected attempts to disrupt the electoral process and deprive voters of their franchise.

However, within an hour, election officials traced Naik's name as well as that of his kin at a different polling centre and guided them to the correct location, after which the entire family cast their votes.

In Naik's case, his name was eventually found not at the Navi Mumbai municipal school where he first went, but at St Mary's School, in a different room. After his public reaction, election machinery was swiftly mobilised to trace his entry in the voter list and communicate the exact booth details to him and his staff.

"It may look simple to locate one person's name, but the voter list and booth allocation system is carefully designed to prevent misuse and overcrowding, with each booth assigned a fixed number of voters," a senior State Election Commission official said.

The official said the confusion arose mainly due to the changed ward pattern in the municipal elections, under which each voter casts four votes for different candidates in a single ward, unlike Lok Sabha and Assembly elections where a voter casts only one vote.

"This increases the effective voter load in each ward. To maintain the prescribed cap of voters per polling booth, we had to create additional booths and, in many cases, change existing polling centres," the official explained.

As per Election Commission of India norms followed by the state poll panel, no polling booth should normally have more than 1,200 voters, with the actual number kept lower to ensure smooth voting even in case of minor disruptions, he said.

Before every election, voter lists are scrutinised, with additions and deletions made, and polling booths finalised based on the total number of voters, the official said.

"Since the gap between the last Lok Sabha and Maharashtra Assembly elections was more than six months, booth locations in those polls had remained largely unchanged. In municipal polls, however, the multiple-vote system at the ward level alters the arithmetic and requires a fresh distribution of voters across more booths," he said.

The official also acknowledged that limited manpower of the SEC and the absence of extensive refresher training meant some voters did not receive electoral slips clearly mentioning their updated polling centres and booth numbers, adding to the confusion on polling day. PTI ND BNM