Chief Election Commissioner HS Brahma on Tuesday said that the Commission will complete the works for linking Aadhaar numbers with the Electorates Photo Identity Cards (EPICs) by August this year even as he said that process will be completed for south Indian States like Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala and Goa by May this year.
Brahma said this while interacting with the newsmen at the State guest house here on Tuesday. Brahma was here to address the workshop of North Eastern Electoral Officers on National Electoral Roll Purification & Authentication Programme.
“The linking of Aadhaar numbers with the EPICs will ensure that there is no duplicate voter in the country,” said Brahma while adding that this will also help the authorities to ascertain migration of people from one place to another.
“This will also ease the system of application for any facilities like the ration card etc. One only needs to give his Aadhaar number and he would be able to get the facility,” he said. The CEC further said that the State Assembly elections in Assam, which is due next year, will be held before the May 2016.
“We are going to give EPICs to all the electorates before the next year’s polls. So far about 95 per cent of the electorate in Assam have EPICs. However, all the 1.9 crore electorates will be given the EPICs by July this year,” Brahma said.
“We have already started the process for purification of voters’ list in Assam,” he said while informing that the Commission has started the National Voters’ Service Portal, which will help the electorates to rectify any errors in electoral rolls on their own by logging in online.
“The National Voters’ Service Portal is a first of its kind initiative in the world, wherein a voter can find his or her name, address, polling station, etc. online and can rectify the same from any part of the world,” Brahma said. “The online system also helps in identifying the number of Indian citizens who haven’t registered themselves with the Commission,” he added.