Nagpur graduate seat poll dates spark scramble, voter registration ends September 26

The announcement of the election schedule for the Nagpur Graduate constituency has triggered a scramble among political parties. Representatives of parties as well as prospective candidates have become active on registration, collecting the documents needed for registration from people they know.

The election has been fixed for October 23, but online voter registration for it will run only until September 26. So far the election department has made no official announcement of an extension to the graduate registration deadline. This means the additional voters list for this seat will be released in the first week of October.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, registration heads of various parties visited the divisional commissioner's office and met the chief registration officer, Pradeep Kulkarni, to get the necessary information.

Various discussions are also going on regarding the registration date. The office of Maharashtra's chief electoral officer announced the election schedule on September 22, which came as a shock to everyone. The term of the sitting MLA from the Nagpur Graduate seat, Adv. Abhijit Wanjari, ends in December, so it was being assumed that the election would be announced a month earlier, in November. But the sudden announcement caught everyone off guard.

The election department has given a deadline of September 26 for online registration, and there has been no official announcement so far on extending it.

As for the number of voters, 1.59 lakh graduates had registered for this seat in the first phase. In the second phase, the official registration of 2.08 lakh voters has been confirmed so far. Adding the two remaining days, the figure could reach 2.50 lakh, though there is little scope for it to go much beyond that.

In the 2020 election, 2,07,000 graduates were registered, of whom 1,32,923 voters exercised their franchise. In that election, the winning Congress candidate, Adv. Abhijit Wanjari, got 61,701 votes, while the losing BJP candidate, Sandeep Joshi, got 42,792 votes. Adv. Wanjari won the seat by a margin of 18,910 votes.

On Wednesday, a Congress graduate registration functionary claimed that 1.27 lakh additional voters have registered besides the currently registered voters. The BJP is also claiming roughly the same number of registrations, and a list of the voters who have registered has also been released.

Most political parties had assumed this election would be held in November, but the chief electoral officer suddenly announced the election schedule directly on September 22, surprising everyone. Currently the SIR process is underway, and the administrative machinery in all districts is engaged in it. The SIR work is to be completed by November 4. During this period, the entire government machinery is engaged in hearing objections and complaints as well as correcting errors in the voter list, so no one had anticipated that the election schedule would be announced in the meantime. But as soon as the announcement came, a scramble began among all political parties and contenders.