Dimapur, September 17 : A village in Dimapur district, Diezephe village, has reportedly ‘cleaned up’ its electorate by deleting bogus and proxy names in the village's electoral roll, a public organization said on Saturday.
The Against Corruption and Unabated Taxation (ACAUT) issued a press release on September 17 stating that the village had deleted 274 bogus entries out of 672 names in the electoral roll, filtering out only 398 genuine voters.
“The chairman of the village, Vesato Chuzho, while interacting with ACAUT members, said that the village council decided to take this momentous step as per the Clean Electoral Campaign of the State Election Commission and the Clean Election movement started by the NBCC,” the ACAUT stated.
Working in tandem with the SDO (Civil) of Dhansiripar, the village council deleted 274 bogus entries out of total 672 names in the e-roll to list only 398 names of genuine voters, it stated.
“In fact, so comprehensive has been the purging of bogus names from the e-roll that the village council is now apprehensive that if all the 398 genuine voters end up casting their votes resulting in 100% polling, the ECI would consider such as null and void!” the organization remarked.
Regardless, the ACAUT was of the opinion that this was the first time that a village council in Nagaland had voluntarily decided to clean up its e-roll.
“What Diezephe village has done is transformational and counter to the prevalent culture of the day- where, every single village in Nagaland is competing against their immediate neighbouring village by illegally enhancing their respective e-roll population,” the ACAUT stated.
The organization alleged that the state of Nagaland still had approximately 4,00,000 ‘bogus and multiple names to be deleted.’ Unless ‘this deletion exercise’ is taken up voluntarily by the state's 2,500 odd villages, the anti-corruption platform stated, 'the Clean Electoral Campaign of the State Election Commission and the Clean Election movement started by the NBCC cannot be a success.'
The ACAUT has appealed to all the village councils in Nagaland to follow the example of Diezephe village and Langpangkong range, in Mokokchung.
“ACAUT feels that this is the only way the people can fight widespread corruption at the grass root level, which will go a long way in the battling the menace of corruption that has crippled our state,” the press release added.
