Why Several Voters' Homes Listed As "House Number 0"? Poll Body Clarifies

Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar on Sunday said instances of a person holding multiple voter identity cards arise due to migration or administrative lapses and the poll authority is working to rectify such mistakes.

Addressing a press conference here, Kumar also said the 'House number zero' issue flagged by political parties also arises as several voters do not have a home or their homes have not been given numbers by the panchayat or their respective municipality.

Kumar said the Commission had also addressed the issue of the same voter identity card number allotted to different persons in different states and corrected 3,00,000 such instances.

"Even if a person has votes in two places, he goes to vote at only one place. Voting at two places is a crime and if any person makes a claim of double voting, then proof is required. Proof was asked but was not given," the CEC said.

Kumar said knowingly or unknowingly, some people have ended up having multiple voter identity cards due to migration and other issues, and exercises like the special intensive revision (SIR) would rectify such discrepancies.

On the issue of several voters listing their homes as 'house number zero', the CEC said: "Many people do not have a home, but their name is also in the voter list. The address that is given is the place where that person comes to sleep at night. Sometimes on the side of the road, sometimes under the bridge." "If such voters are called fake voters, it would be a big joke on the poor voters," he said.

Kumar said crores of people have 'zero number' in their house addresses because the panchayat or the municipality has not given the number to the house.

"There are unauthorised colonies in the cities, where they do not have a number, so what address should they fill in their form? So the instructions of the Election Commission say that if there is any such voter in this country, the Election Commission stands with him and will give him a notional number," he said.

"Just because when he fills it in the computer, he sees zero, it does not mean that he is not a voter. In the conditions of becoming a voter, your address is not as important as your citizenship and your completion of eighteen years of age and as long as you live in the vicinity of that booth," Kumar said.

On the issue of a person holding multiple identity cards, Kumar said this was because there was no website of the Election Commission before 200 that had all the data at one place.

"So, since technical facilities were not available before 2003, many such people who migrated to different places, their names were added to many places. Today there is a website, there is a computer, you can select and delete it," Kumar said. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)