Thiruvananthapuram: The number of voters in Kerala has gone down by 5.69 lakh in the final list of voters for the Lok Sabha and Legislative Assembly elections. This is the first electoral list published after a drive was launched to collect Aadhaar details and remove duplicate entries.

There were 2,73,65,345 voters in the list published in January 2022. In the new list published on Thursday after removing duplicate entries and the names of those who have shifted to other places or died, the total number of voters is 2,67,95,581.

Sanjay M Kaul, Chief Electoral Officer, said that over 5 lakh persons getting weeded out was proof the voters' list has been cleaned up. The voters' list is available on the website (www.ceo.kerala.gov.in), taluk offices and with the booth-level officers. 

In the run-up to the state elections in 2021 the then-Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala had levelled serious allegations of fraud in the preparation of voters list. He said there was rampant multiplication of voter identities in over 130 constituencies in Kerala. The State Election Commission had subsequently ordered a review of the disputed entries.

"The names of a single voter has been included in the voters' list of the same constituency four to five times. In most cases, the fraud had been committed using the same name and the same address. In some areas, we found subtle changes made to the photos and addresses," Chennithala had claimed.