Governor of Jharkhand, Draupadi Murmu on Monday stressed on bringing transparency into the system of registration and emphasised on the need to include more eligible voters in the list. The Governor called for simplifying registration process to encourage people left out of the list to follow the footsteps of fellow citizens and take part in the democratic processes.
“Voters aged 18 years or above should be included in the voters list to ensure their better participation in the electoral activities. Process of registering name in the voters list must be simplified, made more transparent and should be convenient. It is also imperative to see that the electoral roll is updated,” said the Governor at a programme on ‘National Voters Day’ organised at Ranchi College’s Aryabhatt Auditorium on Monday.
The Governor expressed that people must exercise their franchise to elect good and deserving candidate. She added that voters must follow their conscience and must not fall prey to cast, religion, language and other inducements while exercising their franchise.
The summary roll published on January 1 was for the first time used in recently concluded Panchayat Elections in Jharkhand. Thus, the State Election Commissioner underscored the significance of error free list for electoral process.
“We as voters are responsible for error free voters list. A voter’s list free of any error is vital for strengthening roots of representative democracy,” added State Election Commissioner, Shiv Basant.
Following the custom of felicitating oldest surviving voter, the district administration felicitated Shiv Shekhar Narayan for exercising franchise without skipping any opportunity to elect suitable candidate. The district administration also felicitated new voters who made their way into the list.
Meanwhile, the office of the Chief Electoral Officer has issued instructions to all district administrations to identify transgenders in their area of jurisdiction and include members of the community in the electoral roll which currently stands under-represented in terms of the number of eligible voters belonging to the third gender category.
Notably, strength of transgender voters has always been contested in the absence of convincing figure of the total population.
“We are concerned as to why transgenders population is low. We have asked all district officials to identify transgenders wherever they are. We are making efforts so that transgenders can use their voting rights,” said Chief Electoral Officer of Jharkhand, l Khiangte.
The department is assessing data generated from summary revision and published on January 1, 2016 to focus at places where the number of voters is less than expectations. The electoral roll has swelled to 2,12,6000, including 1,70,0000 young eligible voters, due to special camps and SVEEP (Systematic Voters Education and Electoral Programme) programme organised regularly by all district election offices. The department will be focusing on increasing number of service voters and strive to accomplish total coverage of EPIC (Elector Photo Identity Card) by organising additional camps and conducting drives in all districts.