Election Commission to allow public to correct voters’ roll details online

Chief Electoral Officer Satyabrata Sahoo said on Wednesday that the public can register the changes directly online and change the photos with supporting scanned documents. The booth level officers will verify the same and carry out the corrections. Through this way the public will also participate in the correction of voters roll, the CEO told reporters.

The EC has announced the special summary revision, 2020 with reference to 01.01.2020 as the qualifying date. The objective is to improve the health of electoral rolls and ensure maximum enrolment of all eligible citizens through the introduced Electors Verification Programme (EVP). The programme will start on September 1 and end by September 30. A meeting with recognised political parties was conducted to brief them about EVP.

In this programme, the citizens can verify their electoral details through voter help line 1950 (for Senior Citizens). The voters can also reach out through voters’ mobile app, National Voters Service Portal (nvsp.in) and can visit common service centres (CSC).

The applicants can also submit hard copy of filled up forms through booth level officers with the EC approved document copies. The public seeking enrolment in voters’ roll can submit a copy of passport, driving license, Aadhaar card and ration card.

All the recognised political parties have been urged to identify and appoint booth level agent for each polling station who would identify the corrections, deletion and modification in electoral rolls along with booth level officers.

The Commission has allowed BLAs of recognised political parties to file applications in bulk, subject to the condition that a BLA shall not submit more than 10 Forms to BLO at one time in a day. If the BLA files more than 30 applications forms during entire period of filing claims and objections, then the cross verification must be done by returning officers.

Further, the BLA will also submit a list of application forms with a declaration that he has personally verified the particulars of the application forms and is satisfied that they are correct, Sahoo said.

The electors may also utilise the services of BLA of their area for making necessary updating of their details in the electoral rolls, the CEO suggested.

When asked about the vacancies related to two Assembly constituencies (Nanguneri and Vikravaandi) and the notification of polls, the CEO said that the state public election department was awaiting orders from the EC in this regard.