ANC deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte has denied the inflation of voting delegates after the party concluded the process of verifying credentials.
Duarte said the process was initially delayed because of separate court rulings on Friday that nullified the KwaZulu-Natal and Free State provincial executive committees as well as 35 branches from the North-West.
Duarte was during a media briefing at the Nasrec Expo Centre where the ANC is holding its national conference.
She said the party decided that PEC members from the two provinces who are not branch delegates already will not be attending the conference as voting delegates. Members from the 35 branches of the North West were also disqualified as voting delegates.
"All those people had to be converted into nonvoting delegates," she said.
Delegates who also did not pass the credential verification process were disqualified. However, members from the Eastern Cape and the Western Cape, who were previously disqualified, were reinstated as voting delegates.
"There is no inflation whatsoever of the numbers... We now stand at 4,700, lower than the number that should have been there to vote. It is not unusual to delay credentials, we do it for the credibility of the process," she said.
ANC members in North West on Friday won their court challenge to have the Bojanala regional conference nullified.
Bojanala, the biggest region in the North-West, was firmly behind presidential candidate Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma. Their absence will now surely deal a blow to her campaign for the ANC's top spot.
The High Court in Pietermaritzburg also, on the same day, rejected an appeal by provincial ANC leaders in KZN and upheld its decision to have the provincial general council meeting in 2015 declared null and void.