Principal Secretary Radha Raturi, who is also the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of the State, said on Friday that the constituency-wise schedules of the voters’ list revision drive has been sent to all the national political parties. With the Election Commission of India having fixed deadline for publication of the final voters’ list on the basis of the Assembly constituencies at January 1, 2017, the State Election Commission has taken initiatives to go for the revision drive. Voter can check the list at the polling booths, the district election office and the office of the assistant election registration officer from October 1, 2016.
Raturi said that to include names in the electoral list , anybody reaching 18 years can fill Form -6 and submit it to the election office between October 1-31, 2016. The final electoral list will be published by January 10, 2017, she added. Thereafter, if any voter dies Form-7 should be filled and submitted to have names of the deceased deleted. In case of the names of the voters or their parents or the ages or the addreses being found wrongly printed, the voters should fill Form-8. If a voter is shifted to another Assembly constituency he should fill Form-8 A. The forms will be available free of cost from the designated places, Raturi informed.
These forms cannot be submitted in bulk by a person or by a regional political party. However, the national political parties can submit such forms in bulk through their booth level agents (BlA). But BlAs cannot submit more than 10 forms in one day. If any BlA submits over 30 correction forms the officials concerned will do cross verifications. BlAs will also submit declarations that they have personally examined all the forms and found that the cases are genuine.
Electoral list will be available on departmental websitewww.ceo.uk.gov.in from october 1, 2016. Any citizen can check his or his family members’ names by going to the search option. Even the voters whose names were deleted between October 2015 and August 31, 2016 can also see the list over this website from October 1, 2016. If they have any objection they can lodge complaints before the election registarion officers (ERO). The list thus revised with the names being deleted will be provided to the political parties as well.
In a bid to ensure everyone should get a chance to cast his/her vote, the election commission is all set to do rectification work between October 1-31, 2016 through specially organised camps or electorate facilitation centres. Besides, they can submit their forms in all educational institutes, higher secondary schools, colleges, polytechnique and IIT. Forms-6-8A can be submitted at PDS shops and Aaganwadi centres too. Eletoral list- hard and soft copy -(without picture) will be provided to the representatives of the political parties before october 1, 2016. To get the views on the rectification programme, the election commission would have meeting with poltiical parties in the last week of september.
CEO has apppealed to the political parties to appoint their BlAs by september 25 for each of the Assembly cosntituencies and submit their BlA list (one each hard and soft copy) to the district election office (DEO) concerned. She further said that as per the Public Representative Act-1950, name of a voter should not be registered in more than one Assembly constituency. If any person has included his name in more than one costituency he is liable for legal action that comprises one year’s imprisonment or fine or both, she warned.
She further said that the political parties swing into action with the election coming near. “They should instead remain active all the year round to help the election procedure turn more transparent,” she said. She added that the persons can have the mistakes in the electoral list promptly corrected by visiting the election commission website www.eci.gov.in.
She also appealed to the political parties to keep in touch with them to enable the election commission to communicate all relevant information to them from time to time at short notice.