Special summary revision meet with political parties

Dimapur, Sep. 25 (EMN): A meeting for special summary revision of electoral roll 2018 was held at Hotel Japfu on Sep. 25 with all the political parties. CEO Nagaland, Abhijit Sinha in his opening remark said revision of electoral rolls starts with draft publication of electoral rolls well before the actual commencement of revision of electoral roll with special focus to have a clean electoral roll. He informed that the Election Commission of India has decided to use VVPAT in all the future election and no relaxation/deviation will be allowed in the upper limit of 1200 and 1400 electors in both rural and urban polling stations. Electoral rolls with draft publication of electoral roll are carried out with the sole intention of achieving high fidelity electoral rolls and accordingly, pre-revision activities like training and orientation of EROs/AEROs carried from time to time, he informed. CEO also said appointment of Booth Level Officers (BLOs) and their training and orientation, identification of critical gaps/deviations in electoral rolls and strategies are carried out to bridge remove, deletion of identified multiple entries/dead electors, de-duplication campaign to remove duplicate entries in the electoral roll, and preparation of improved digital maps of polling areas, photography campaign for residual electors whose images are not available in the roll (H2H campaign to collect images of residual electors), preparation of CEO’s website for draft publication of integrated rolls and providing search facility, standardization of search facility at website, updating of control tables (including polling stations updating) and database and integration of rolls (irrespective of whether it is election or non-election year), preparation of detailed action plan for SVEEP etc. have been planned by the States/UTs. Longitude of all polling stations, newly identified and proposed for creation/change of location of polling stations shall be captured and details of the same shall be updated in the dashboard. The CEO requested ERO/DEOs to extensively use the e-mail facility for prompt and accurate exchange of communication. The commission has decided to take up revision of electoral rolls with reference to Jan. 1, 2018 as the qualifying date. The revision shall be a special summary revision in all States and Union Territories (except Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh) and shall be undertaken as per the schedule annexed to this letter, in accordance with Manual On Electoral Roll, 2016 along with subsequent instructions with regards to revision of electoral rolls free registration of electors, issued from time to time by the commission. No change in the dates in the schedule approved by the commission will be permitted. Adequate publicity and awareness drive shall be ensured by DEOs and CEO regarding the summary revision programme. All the DEOs and CEO shall get the revision schedule properly disseminated to media, political parties and social organizations should reach out to electors/eligible population extensively well before the date of draft publication of electoral rolls. For making the purpose of publication of draft rolls effective, series of SVEEP events, multiple and periodic meetings with political parties at Taluk, district and state levels and regular press meets may be organized. All DEOs and CEO shall separately call meetings of political parties and explain the schedule and seek cooperation expected of them before the date of draft publication. The draft publication should be done on the approved date with due fanfare publicity and the copies of draft rolls should be handed over to recognized political parties in public meeting in the presence of press and media. In any case, proper acknowledgement receipts from the representatives of political parties must be obtained and kept in record, CEO informed. Sinha asked the recognized political parties to identify and appoint Booth Level Agent (BLA) for each polling station who would be associated with the special campaign for roll revision process on special campaign dates along with BLOs. According to DIPR report, on these special campaign dates, the BLOs will go through the draft electoral roll with BLAs of recognized political parties of State concerned and identify the corrections, etc. BLAs, once appointed from a recognised political party, will continue as BLA, unless their appointment is rescinded/revoked by the political party concerned. In addition to Divisional Commissioners, who shall act as electoral roll observers for districts comprised within their divisions, the Commission may depute its observers/ECl officers/roll auditors to randomly check, audit and supervise the revision process. Hence, it is essential that all roll related records including reports of progress as well as lists of the locations where field operations are in progressshould be kept up to date and made available to the observers. The electors’ information in prescribed Formats 1-8 related to draft publication of the electoral roll shall be furnished by the CEO along with his studied comments and explanatory memoranda to the Commission well before draft publication. Every DEO/ERO will do the similar study for his/her district/assembly constituency and forward the same to the CEO and keep this ready for reference by roll observer/CEO. The CEO shall take prior written clearance of the Commission for final publication of the electoral rolls. A request to that effect shall be made to the Commission by the Chief Electoral Officer along with Formats 1-8 by 20th December 2017 and with Formats 1-8, memoranda/note mandatorily on how the revision process has achieved the targets fixed and the strategy to address any shortfalls during continuous updating may also be furnished. This should, in any case, be done at least 7 days before the date of final publication, so that clearance DEOs/EROs shall do Periodic reporting of progress made during the revision process regularly bymaking entries in prescribed Formats available at ECI dashboard, in accordance with the procedure laid down therein. The CEO shall check it to ensure its up to date status. It is reiterated for absolute compliance by all the concerned that dash board must be kept updated at all times. Any lapse on part of the concerned officer shall expose him/her to disciplinary actions of the Commission may be conveyed at least three days before the date of publication. Additional CEO, N Moa Aier mentioned that in order to facilitate the stakeholders and bringing more transparency in the process of electoral registration, the practice of computerization and posting of all application forms received in Forms 6, 6A, 7,8 and 8A on the website of the CEO on a day to day basis, shall continue. The status of each application form should be clearly visible on each row of the list. Further, the web application used for this purpose should also provide a facility, that on clicking on any row in the list, the concerned application form can be printed by any citizen. With a view to ensure more involvement of political parties, the Commission has allowed BLAs of a recognized political party 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 one day. If a BLA flies more than 30 applications/forms during entire period of filing claims and objections, then the cross verification must be done by ERO/AERO themselves. Display of list of claims and objections list of all claims and objections received are put up on the website of CEO so that any citizen may be able to see the list and lodge objections with the concerned ERO. In addition to this - Adequate publicity, all DEOs and all EROs should hold meetings with political parties and inform them about the publication of list of claims and objections on CEO’s website and cheek the latest instructions of the commission about disposal of claims and objections. (1) Website of CEO as clickable lists for each polling station (2) Notice board of ERO (In Forms 9, 10, 11 and 11 A of RERs 1960) (3) Notice board of polling station (in Forms 9, 10, 11 and 11 A of RERs 1%0) (4) A personal notice has been served on the person whose name is proposed to be deleted in cases other than death cases. All deletions on the ground of death shall be made only after ascertaining the fact of death to the satisfaction of ERO. Verification before decisions on deletions and those done on the ground of death should be verified by an officer not below the rank of Tehsildar before final order is passed on Form 7 cases of deletions must be cross verified personally by Electoral Registration Officer if they fall in any of the following categories. It further clarified that all the Forms received during Special Drive 2017 shall be disposed of and registered death cases be removed from the roll after following due procedure. The supplements shall be prepared well before the draft publication of electoral rolls, 2018 so that outcome of disposal is reflected in integrated draft electoral roll at the time of its publication. Preparation of Elector Photo Identity Card (EPIC) for the first-time young electors may be done latest by 20thJanuary2018 and handed over to BLO/ERO/DEO etc. by 22ndJanuary 2018 for ceremonial distribution on National Voters’ Day, Jan. 25, 2018, the. Representatives of political parties from RJD, BJP, NCP, and both factions of NPF attended the programme.